As Enzo Maresca evaluates the league table, Leicester City rivals’ ‘compliments’ have hidden agendas.

Leicester City could open up a seven-point gap inside the Championship’s top two if they beat third-placed Preston at the King Power Stadium on Wednesday evening

Leicester City can open up a seven-point gap inside the automatic promotion places tonight but that is “nothing” at this stage of the season, manager Enzo Maresca has declared.

City take on third-placed Preston at the King Power Stadium and if they record their fifth straight Championship win, they will not only overtake Ipswich and return to the top of the division, but they will give themselves a seven-point cushion inside the top two. It would feel like a healthy margin 10 games into the campaign, but that it is so early means the table and the gap to the chasing pack is of no consideration to boss Maresca.

“It’s early days,” Maresca said at his press conference this week. “Seven points in October is nothing. It’s three games! Now it’s much better to have seven points more than seven points less, 100 per cent. But to be focused about having seven points more is not our case, absolutely not.”

READ MORE: Leicester City predicted line-up vs Preston with four changes amid Enzo Maresca policy

Such has been City’s form over the first couple of months of the campaign, it’s led rival managers to declare them champions already. Norwich’s David Wagner did so, as well as Blackburn’s Jon Dahl Tomasson.

But Maresca is refusing to take the comments as compliments about his side. Instead, he believes they are attempts to get inside his players’ heads.

He said: “It’s a way for the opposition managers and clubs to put us more under pressure. I’ve always said the same: we belong in the Championship. After nine games, it’s difficult to say, only because we are first in the league, we are going to be promoted.

“We cannot manage different people. They can say what they think. But I don’t agree. It’s not a compliment for me. It’s just a way to give us more responsibility.

“This is a club that three months ago was relegated. We have changed more than 50 per cent of the squad. Part of the 50 per cent of the squad that stay here are players that were not involved, like Jannik (Vestergaard), like Ricardo (Pereira) and JJ (James Justin) because of their injuries.

“We have changed many things. That we are already in the Premier League, I don’t pay attention to that.”