Leicester City boss Miquel staying positive despite injury woes | OneFootball

Leicester City manager Amandine Miquel is remaining positive despite being without some important players due to injury.

The Foxes return to Barclays Women’s Super League action this weekend when they travel to Crawley to face an in-form Brighton & Hove Albion side.

When speaking in the pre-match press conference, Leicester City boss Miquel delivered some bad news on the fitness of Noémie Mouchon whilst indicating that Jutta Rantala will be out for a while.

“We weren’t sure straight away, but we have now assessed the injury to Noémie Mouchon and it’s probably the longest injury she could have,” Miquel said. “We can’t say a time right now, but she’ll be out for the season [after rupturing her ACL].

“Missy [Goodwin] is feeling better, not 100 percent but feeling better now. Nothing more to report on Jutta Rantala, it’s not an ACL injury, but still an injury that will keep her out for a while.”

Leicester City have struggled for goals so far this season. While injuries to attacking players aren’t helping matters, Miquel remains upbeat and says that it is the responsibility of others to step up.

She said “My feeling right now is that anyone with two arms and two legs can score potentially. You have to be positive, they all know how to play. We have to trust that everyone can score a goal and we have to strongly believe that.

“Ideally, you want the right player for the right position because they know it better, but in the end, I want to think positive. anyone can score, defender or in midfield. In the last game, we had Yuka [Momiki] scoring.

“We have to take the positive side of what is happening to us. We may be lacking offensive players but we will have some players who can play higher and surprise us.”

Miquel knows that this weekend’s fixture against Brighton & Hove Albion won’t be easy, however, she wants to put an end to The Seagulls’ positive start to the season.

She said “They’ve changed manager and players like us, that’s good, I’m happy for them. It’s good to start well but also good to maintain it, so we’ll see how long they maintain their good start. Our objective is to stop that good start for them and make our progress a bit better, but it will be a difficult game. They are very interesting with some good quality players with experience.

“Any opponent can be beaten depending on what we give and what we put out there. The start has been slow and we have been going through difficulties with injuries but I still believe the main thing is the mentality. We might be reduced, but I think it’ll give us more energy to fight for those who are injured and can’t play for us.”

International breaks have been known to hinder teams in terms of momentum, however, Miquel and her staff have used the last fortnight very wisely to reflect on the start of the season.

She said “We firstly used it to analyse the last four months in detail, everything that we’ve been doing; training, player load, how we attack, how we defend because we want to make sure we don’t miss anything and we do our best to perform in the weeks to come. We’ve seen things we need to improve and we’re going to work on that now.”

Leicester City’s Barclays Women’s Super League fixture at Brighton and Hove Albion kicks-off at 2pm on Sunday afternoon.