Leicester City Manager Makes Worrying Admission

Leicester City manager Enzo Maresca has voiced his frustrations as his side prepare to face an away trip to Plymouth Argyle on Friday evening following a long distance mid-week journey to Millwall.

The Foxes face a nearly 500-mile round trip to Devon for the opening fixture of the weekend, despite arriving home in the early hours of Wednesday morning following the near 250-mile journey to South London.

Maresca’s side are challenging for immediate promotion back to the Premier League, but have played almost 50 games. The East Midlands club sit top of the Championship but with Ipswich Town and Leeds United waiting to pounce following the 1-0 loss at The Den. The top three are separated by just one point.

The East Midlands-based team are still favourites to secure the title having played one game less than their promotion challengers. They will be hoping to return to winning ways on Friday, although the manager admitted he was not happy with they way the fixtures have fallen.  

“Absolutely, yes. Absolutely, 100%,” he told the BBC, when asked whether he is concerned about his players welfare.“But I don’t think people care too much about players, about healthy players. Otherwise you cannot understand this kind of decision.

“Thanks to the organisation we played on Tuesday night, arrived here at three o’clock in the morning, then today we need to travel and we have five hours back from Plymouth.

“The organisation decided that.

“Then if the players don’t perform, they are bad? No, they are not bad, they are human beings and we have played already nearly 50 games this season. They are human beings and people don’t care about that.

“We will try to be ready for Friday night to try to finish the season in the best way we can.”

Following the trip to Plymouth, Leicester face successive home matches against play-off chasers Southampton and West Bromwich Albion as the fixture list shows no signs of easing up, despite only five games remaining.

Writer’s View

Understandably, Maresca is annoyed. These footballers are not robots, they are human beings. Whoever sorted the fixtures should be ashamed as a double trip totalling up to over 750 miles shouldn’t be done over the space of a few days. The Foxes boss is clearly worried about burnout.

At a time when player welfare is so high on the agenda for the authorities, this sort of thing shouldn’t be expected of the players. The only ‘saving grace’ is that Leicester follows this up with two home games, but that’s not the point.

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