James Justin confident table-topping Leicester can cope with fixture demands

Leicester City v Wolverhampton Wanderers – Premier League – King Power Stadium
(Image credit: Tim Keeton)

Leicester defender James Justin insists they must learn to cope with the demanding schedule after going top of the Premier League.

The Foxes lead going into the international break following Sunday’s 1-0 win over Wolves and Liverpool’s 1-1 draw at Manchester City.

Jamie Vardy’s first-half penalty – his ninth goal of the season – secured a sixth straight win in all competitions.

Leicester have nine games in 28 days when they return – starting against Liverpool – but Justin is aware of what is ahead.

“It does take a toll on you after a while, but we get what we signed up for, really, and we knew how hard it was going to be this season,” he told the club’s official site.

“We’re using the squad to full effect. Physically, we’re in a good place.

“It’s an amazing run for us and hopefully we can rest and recover in this international break and come back fresh.

“We had to try and get through that somehow, and it was just the runs in behind that we kept on pushing and pushing, and we got the two penalties. We converted one, and that was enough for the game.

“We’ve shown this season that we react well to adversity and we showed that in the second half, where we had to dig in.”

Justin was brought down by Rayan Ait-Nouri for a second penalty in the first half but Rui Patricio saved Vardy’s spot kick.

Wolves improved after the break and Ruben Neves was denied by a fine Kasper Schmeichel save in the second half but it was the closest the visitors came.

They sit ninth in the Premier League after their four-match unbeaten run was ended.

Neves told the club’s official site: “We always take positive things from our games. We need to look back at our bad things, improve them and get better. It’s all about improving for the next game.

“We always want better. We know we need to do better, and we can. We will never be satisfied. We want to win every game. I think we played well this last month, but we cannot come to the game and start like we did, which cost us three points.

“In the Premier League, when you start like that, you’re in trouble against this kind of team.

“We created chances to score, they had chances as well. A draw would have been a fair result, because unfortunately we didn’t score, and the penalty was the difference.”