Advertisement

'Enzo is going to have to work incredibly hard to regain the confidence'

Stephy Mavididi of Leicester City and teammates react following their team's defeat in the Sky Bet Championship match between Plymouth Argyle and Leicester City at Home Park
[Getty Images]

Leicester City were dealt another blow to their automatic promotion hopes as they lost to Plymouth Argyle, suffering back-to-back defeats for just the fourth time this season.

Former Leicester City winger Matt Piper has been reacting to the scenes after the 1-0 defeat on the When You're Smiling podcast: "The players are walking over to the 1,700 [supporters] who have travelled. There are a lot [of people] who have stayed to clap the team. I think there is a few in there that are asking the question: where do we go from here?

"The players are going right up to the front of the crowd. James Justin is there at the front. There is a lot of arm waving.

"It is not a great sight. Not many of the other players have gone over, they have gone straight down the tunnel like they are embarrassed. Especially in that second half, that is the right feeling. They should feel that. I don't think they should feel proud of that performance.

"You have 1,700 travelling Leicester fans who won't get home until 4am. They have spent an absolute fortune to come and watch you, and it was just more of the same - those real poor performances we have been seeing lately.

Piper also commented on the "casual arrogance" that he believes some players showed at Home Park: "It is no good anymore praising this team for playing 'attractive football' between both penalty areas, because they just keep losing football matches. The longer you keep doing that, you don't deserve to go back up to the Premier League.

"Enzo [Maresca] is going to have to work incredibly hard with this group to try to regain the confidence.

"We looked lethargic most of the night. I thought there was a casual arrogance in certain players' performances - they thought they would just turn up to 20th in the table Plymouth Argyle and roll them over. That wasn't the case.

"They [Plymouth Argyle] showed a lot more fight, a lot more passion and a lot more desire to stay in the league than we did to go and win the league. When that happens, you lose football matches, and it is not good enough."

Listen to the full podcast on BBC Sounds