Schmeichel: Leicester haven´t won anything yet

Kasper Schmeichel played down the growing fervour around Leicester City’s remarkable Premier League title bid after he was named as the Danish FA’s player of the year.

Schmeichel has helped Claudio Ranieri’s underdogs to establish a five-point advantage over Tottenham with seven matches to play, while Arsenal are six points further back in third with a game in hand.

But having beaten Spurs star Christian Eriksen to the award in Copenhagen on Monday, Schmeichel did not rule out his international colleague having the last laugh in England’s top flight come May.

“We haven’t won anything yet. I think people need to relax a little,” he told The Daily Mail. “There is still a very long way to go.

“We keep our feet firmly on the ground and do what we’ve done all season, namely to take one match at a time.

“There’s no pressure on us. We just enjoy playing the games.

“I probably hadn’t expected that we’d be so high at the moment, but I have always believed that we could do something special as to guarantee us a place in the European tournaments. 

“We have great players, but most of all we have a great team spirit.”

Veteran goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer, who has served as Schmeichel’s understudy since joining Leicester from Chelsea in January last year, believes achieving an effective balance between attack and defence lies at the heart of his club’s success under Ranieri.

“Initially we were playing a lot more open football, we attacked whenever we had the opportunity,” Schwarzer told The Daily Mirror.

“That was one of our strengths, the ability to counter attack very quickly, and that is still one of our weapons.

“But once we hit that first clean sheet of the season, it cemented the idea that keeping clean sheets is important and is a good foundation to build on.”