Leicester City’s tactical magician Claudio Ranieri has opened up about his expectation for the upcoming Premier Leagues season.
Ranieri led a below-average(on-paper) Leicester team to the Premier League title last season, where the Foxes were given 5000-1 odds of winning the English top flight.
In the end Leicester won the title with a huge gap of 10 points over runner-ups Arsenal.
However Ranieri is staying modest even after a miraculous feat, as he prepares for the new season, the Italian manager has is looking to take it one-by-one.
He says that the first objective is to stay up, and guide the team to safety, “The fundamental concept is to start from scratch,” Ranieri said. “We’ve won the title and it was beautiful and fantastic, it was maybe an unrepeatable achievement, but now we turn the page.
“If at the start of last season the bookmakers had us down as 5000-1 shots, then this time we start at 6000-1. Our objective to start the season with is to reach 40 points and stay up.
“Then, once we’ve reached that objective, we can raise the bar: finish in the top 10, [qualify for] the Europa League, a place in the Champions League. And maybe we can win one of the five trophies will be challenging for: Community Shield, Premier League, FA Cup, League Cup and Champions League. That is our running order, step by step.”
Ranieri believes that Leicester’s task will be even more difficult this season as people will be expecting them to perform better, while rivals will be coming after them to take their title.
Also, Leicester will have additional pressure of playing in the Champions League this season.
“The Champions League is a fascinating adventure, but it burns copious amounts of energy, particularly psychologically,” the 64-year-old said. “Were going to have to learn to live with this extra distribution of strength and be good at lifting ourselves up again.
“We might therefore lose a few more games and that’s where we will see how capable we are of reacting.”