Leicester City: Sunderland boss Tony Mowbray says Foxes unstoppable in hunt for promotion
No-one can stop Leicester City from returning to the Premier League as Championship title winners, says Sunderland boss Tony Mowbray.
The Foxes beat Sunderland on Tuesday to move eight points clear at the summit with their 12th league win in 13 games.
For the first time in 50 years Leicester also made it four successive home wins without conceding a goal.
“How good are they? They are Premier League,” Mowbray told BBC Sport when asked about Leicester.
“I don’t think anyone will catch them. I think Leicester will win the title.
“I don’t know how many Premier League appearances there is in that team, I don’t know what their salary level is for the football club, but what I do know is it has a lot more Premier League experience than we have got, and it’s got a lot more expense attached to its players than we have got.
“I’m only interested in us coming and giving a good account of ourselves and testing ourselves against a Premier League outfit, and they will be a Premier League outfit again next season.”
‘We ain’t finishing above Leicester’
Only four players in Leicester’s starting XI against Sunderland have not featured in the Premier League, and only one – Italy Under-21 international Cesare Casadei – is yet to play in the top flight in any country to date.
Six players involved in Tuesday’s triumph won the FA Cup with the Foxes in 2021, with Premier League-winning Leicester greats Jamie Vardy and Marc Albrighton coming off the bench.
Already Enzo Maresca’s table-topping Foxes are the fastest team to amass 36 points in Championship history.
And after 13 games they are seven points better off than Leicester’s title-winning Championship side of 2014 at the same stage. They went on to win promotion with two games to spare and finish on 102 points.
“I heard before the game that Burnley had 19 points after 12 games last season [when they were promoted as champions], which is what we have got,” Mowbray said.
“Don’t worry about Leicester City on 36 points, we ain’t finishing above Leicester City.”
- Maresca ‘not scared’ of fresh start with Leicester
When asked what he made of Mowbray’s title predictions and praise for the Foxes, Maresca said it was “something nice” but was quick to play it down.
“At the same time it sometimes happens because they want to give you some pressure,” he told BBC Sport. “But I don’t think it is Tony’s case tonight, to be honest.
“I don’t think we are the only one team building to reach the target, or the only team with some players that have been in the Premier League.
“We are happy, but we are not thinking we are the only one club in this Championship trying to get promoted.”
Maresca has been quick to turn Leicester into the Championship team to catch since his summer appointment, and has done so with an emphasis on patient, deliberate and possession-based build-up play.
Records and milestones are seemingly being achieved with every game, not that the 43-year-old Italian is getting distracted by any of it.
“We try to separate it because we know that all these kind of records are important if we reach our target,” he said.
“At the same time, these kind of records show what we have done – that this is not something normal.
“It is not something normal because the reality for any team in football is that you lose more than you win.
“Because they have done something so important they need to enjoy it, but for us [the staff] we are still in October and would like to have the same situation in March or April for sure.”
And it is lessons that Maresca has learned when winning the Treble as assistant to Pep Guardiola at Manchester City last season that is helping keep his Foxes focused in the second division.
“For sure, being in that environment you can learn different things, and one thing is to handle when you win games,” he said.
“Being there I understood how difficult it is, even for City to win 1-0 or when the opponent is man to man and you struggle even against a small club.
“So the good thing is every game is different, every game is difficult, and when you win, you need to enjoy it because in football it is reality that you lose more than you win.”
