Ranieri hails ´Leicester spirit´ after Spurs draw

Claudio Ranieri praised the “Leicester spirit” following Saturday’s 1-1 draw with Tottenham at White Hart Lane.

The visitors recovered from falling behind to a Vincent Janssen penalty on the stroke of half-time to equalise three minutes into the second half as Ahmed Musa netted his second goal in as many games.

The result snapped a run of four consecutive Premier League defeats on the road for the champions and left Ranieri contented.

“I’m very pleased,” he said. “We played very, very well against a big team. If I remember well, the last home game Tottenham played, they won 2-0 against [Manchester] City and we produced a fantastic performance with our Leicester spirit.

“So far [this season] we haven’t seen everybody showing that spirit together, but today I saw everyone showing it. It helped us last season and it must help us again this season, not to win the title but to fight and to defend the title.”

The Italian felt Robert Huth was unfortunate to concede the first-half penalty, but preferred to focus on his side’s response to the setback. 

“The referee gave the penalty, but before that there should have been a foul given our way and for me it was not a penalty,” he said. 

“But all the managers say that. But it was okay, we reacted well and both sides wanted to win right until the end. This is the nature of the Premier League; both teams want to win the match every time.”

Ranieri remains hopeful that Islam Slimani, who did not feature against Spurs, will recover from his groin injury in time for the midweek Champions League trip to Copenhagen.

“I think he should be available,” he said. “But we’ll see tomorrow if he is ready.”