James fit and ready for Ranieri’s Foxes
Matty James was made to wait for his 100th Leicester City appearance this weekend but it was not due to a lack of fitness, according to manager Claudio Ranieri.
After nearly 18 months out with a knee injury, James was named in the match day squad to take on Middlesbrough on Saturday.
The central midfielder has not featured for the first-team since rupturing his anterior cruciate ligament in the victory over Southampton in April last year.
The 25-year-old appeared to be on the verge of coming off the bench at the King Power Stadium only for Ranieri to change his mind at put Demarai Gray on instead on 76 minutes.
(PAUL ELLIS/AFP/Getty Images)
But the Foxes manager explained that it was tactics based after Leicester fell behind to Alvaro Negredo’s second strike five minutes earlier, before Islam Slimani’s stoppage-time penalty rescued a point for the champions.
Ranieri explained: “I said to him ‘are you ready to play?’ because I wanted to help my midfielders, but when I said ‘ready?’ they scored the second goal!”
“Then I had to change and put [Demarai] Gray in there to try to help [Islam] Slimani and create chances for us.
“They played with 4-3-3 but with more players in the middle. We played just with two and we suffered a lot. Andy King and Daniel Amartey worked so hard. For them it was easier to keep possession between the lines because always they had more players there than us.”
