Danny Ward opens up on poor Leicester City start but refuses to blame key factor

Leicester City goalkeeper Danny Ward has insisted Leicester City “cannot blame the transfer window” for their poor start to the season.

City have picked up just one point from their opening six Premier League games, with pressure piling on manager Brendan Rodgers to turn fortunes around drastically. While the manager has spoken several times about the lack of transfer activity in the summer, Ward says the players are not thinking that way.

After admitting he had personally gotten off to a “probably average” start between the sticks, which he put down to “a confidence thing”, Ward could not be so sure about why the team have started so poorly.

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“If we knew (why the team had a bad start) then we wouldn’t be in this position,” he told The Times. “There’s many factors that it could be but you can never pinpoint one.

“We can’t blame the transfer window for the performances that we have put out on the pitch. Sometimes it doesn’t help in terms of personnel but as players our job isn’t to sort transfers out, our job is on the pitch regardless we’ve got a group of players who can achieve something and we all know each other’s qualities.

“It’s always about the collective, it will only be the collective that gets us out of this and we’ve got to stick together. We’re disappointed with the start we’ve made and that we’ve not hit the levels that we know we can but we’re all calm, we know what we can do and what we can still achieve this season.”

After Rodgers said earlier this week that the team’s aim is to get 40 points, Ward echoed that but insisted the R-word is not on the minds of the players. “We’re not thinking about a relegation battle, we know what we’ve got in the changing room and around the club,” he said.

“It’s just a case of putting in performances that will get us results and 40 points has always been the first milestone and then we go again from there. In terms of relegation we’ve still got another 32 [games] to go, nobody is saying someone is going to win the league after six games.

“Nobody knows what’s going to happen. It’s about going again which is the oldest cliché but probably the most real scenario.”

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