Leicester City’s European hopes in the season of 2017/18 suffered a blow in today’s clash with Burnley.
Travelling to Turf Moor for the tie against Sean Dyche’s fellow European hopefuls, a bright start from the hosts saw them take a 2-1 victory as Jamie Vardy’s 72nd-minute effort wasn’t enough to stage a late comeback.
Former Leicester player Chris Wood opened the scoring, before Kevin Long added a second within the opening ten minutes of the first half.
Leicester manager Claude Puel admitted post game that our chances of now qualifying for the Europa League were over but with several opportunities coming our way ahead of Vardy’s consolation we only have ourselves to blame for that.
He told the BBC.
“I think so, yes. Of course there are games remaining but Burnley now have a lot of chances.”
Puel could at least take some solace from a far improved second half as we threw the proverbial kitchen sink at Burnley but it was our wasteful play, especially in front of goal, that ultimately bit us.
With Kasper Schmeichel also going off injured late on hopefully that won’t be a further blow as we can still finish the campaign strongly.
Seventh is still a mathematical possibility but it’s going to take a number of twists and turns to come off for us now, including Southampton winning the FA Cup. All we can do is get back to winning ways and see what happens elsewhere.
CLAUDE: “While it’s mathematically possible (to finish seventh) we have to keep fighting. We’re chasing a very good team that showed a lot of solidity today. But there were promising spells for us, so we keep going.” #BurLei
— Leicester City (@LCFC) April 14, 2018