A poor decision by referee hindered Leicester City from taking their points’ advantage in double digits in Premiership on Sunday, but, still, Claudio Ranieri did not lose his grace.

It’s not an easy time to keep the patience for somebody in Ranieri’s position especially while being on the receiving end of the wrong decisions.

The Italy native has put his blood, sweat and tears to convert a dream into actuality, but, every point lost from here threatens for that dream to remain a dream only.

However, Ranieri reckons since he is a coach, what falls under his jurisdiction is to see how his players are going and that’s what he does rather than to keep an eye on the match officials and prepare a report card of their decision making.
As per Ranieri, the decisions are made in front of everyone and people watch everything from different angles on their television screens and they can realize themselves what is right and what is wrong.

However, providing his own point of view, Ranieri said that Vardy, who was sent off the pitch, doesn’t indulge himself in diving at all. It’s just that his speed of moving on the ground is pretty high and with that sort of speed, even if a slight contact is made, it straightaway comes under the scanner.

Ranieri also stressed that the ambition, which this journey of Leicester had started with, was to try and get enough points to avoid slipping to the second division. They never saw themselves as trophy contenders. So, the panic is not there as to what happens if they fall down from the top. If it happens and if another side, be it the Spurs or the Gunners or anyone, is better, they would be crowned champions.

Former Manchester United defender Rio Ferdinand has dismissed any chance of Arsenal producing a remarkable comeback to beat Barcelona in the last 16 of the Champions League.

A 2-0 loss at the Emirates in the first leg means that Arsenal have a mountain to climb in the return leg at the Camp Nou. Their recent exit from the FA Cup coupled with poor domestic form in the league mean that the Champions League gains more prominence than ever. However, Arsenal have already suffered several exits at the hands of Barcelona previously at this stage.

Ferdinand expects more of the same since Barcelona are unstoppable right now. The Catalan club are unbeaten in the last 37 matches and come on the back of a fresh 6-0 thrashing in the la Liga. Their attacking power has been so immense this season that any frailties in the defence do not appear to concern them much.

The attacking trio of Neymar, Lionel Messi, and Luis Suarez have together scored more than a 100 goals between them. After having had just one win – against a Championship team – in the last five games, Arsenal are not expected to get anything and once again are expected to crash out at the last 16 stage.

“Do I give Arsenal a chance? No, not at all.They have got to go there and score three goals to win outright and not concede. Well tell me the last team that did that?How do you defend against Messi, Suarez and Neymar? You pray quitea lot – even if you’ve got a Manchester discount card! The problem with those three is that they can tear up a teamtalk within seconds. It’s almost impossible at the moment to stop them given the amount of goals they are scoring,” said Ferdinand. Arsene Wenger, though, remains confident about his team’s ability to come back into the tie.

The 27 years old Ritchie de Laet defender has never truly managed to stand out with his former club Manchester United and his current side Leicester City. The Belgium player has had to settle with a spot on the sidelines of the English club and things have recently turned even worse for him after picking up an ankle injury.

Ritchie de Laet sustained the injury during a training session with Leicester Cityand this has extended even further the period of time that the Belgium has to stay out of the pitch and worsening his chances of turning into a regular player.

The Belgium defender joined Leicester City back in May of 2012 after being released by Manchester United and Ritchie de Laet was a regular player for the English club as he managed to make 41 appearances in his debut season and in his 2nd season Ritchie de Laet made 36 appearances but as his time in the club has progressed, his role in the team has diminished.

Even with his diminished role in the English club, Ritchie de Laet is hoping that he return to his old ways and get consistent playing time in Leicester City and hopefully get the attention of the staff members of his national team and get a call from them to play for the Belgium side.

Leicester City’s Ritchie de Laet expressed his desire to turn into a prominent and regular player for Belgium as the defender told the media: “I would like to play for Belgium but, if you look at the quality in the squad, you have to play in a big league. I need to be in the Premier League so, hopefully, we will go up and I can keep my right-back spot and see what happens.

“A couple of years ago, I would have got into the Belgiumside. Carl Hoefkens, of Stoke, was playing and he was captain. He got into the national side so I probably would have. But there is a lot of talent now and they all play in big leagues around the world. That is what I need, to go up with Leicester.”

Birmingham City manager Gary Rowett believes that there are several young players capable of being promoted to the first-team before the end of the season.Rowett has been at the club for almost a year and he has transformed the club’s fortunes without investing heavily in the transfer market.

A large portion of the success has been achieved by promoting young players from the youth team. Viv Solomon-Otabor is one of the huge success stories for Birmingham in the last year.Rowett, however, says that he is not the only success story and there are more waiting on the wings.

The manager believes that the likes of Emmanuel Mbende and Charlee Adams have been showing tremendous qualityand this could see them promoted to the first-team in the near future. Even with only two wins in the last five Championship games, Birmingham have been able to maintain their position in the play-off places. Such has been the good start to the season. The club recently returned to form with a 5-2 win over struggling Fulham. This result will provide a lot of confidence ahead of the tough matches against the likes of Middlesbrough and Brighton and Hove Albion.

Solomon-Otabor was one of the scores for Birmingham in the win over Fulham. “We’ve got some good young players. One of the benefits of having a smaller squad is that we have to fill some of the gaps in with the younger players. If I had to look for the immediate ones I’d say [Reece Brown] Browny is in and around it. He was on the bench again at the weekend.Sometimes when your team is doing well and being successful they perhaps have to be a little bit more patient than they would be normally,” saidRowett, whose team take on Charlton this weekend.

Ritchie de Laet performed in Old Trafford from 2008 until 2011 before being offloaded to Leicester City. In this period of time, Ritchie de Laet made a grand total of 3 appearances for the Premier League club as the Belgium could never snatch a regular spot in Manchester United but his career has reignited after he moved away from the club.

When Ritchie de Laet made his move to Leicester City, the defender immediately turned into a player who managed to snatch a regular spot in the team and even helped Leicester City in getting into the playoffs of the 2012-13 Championship League.’

The 26 year old defender is now being viewed as an attractive summer target with many clubs of the English Championship League hoping to sign Ritchie de Laet but it doesn’t seem like he will leaving Leicester City as it was the club which had faith in him and revived his playing career after it appeared to be lifeless.

Although Ritchie de Laet did not have an influential role at Manchester United, the Belgium defender has revealed that there was something which occurred in Old Trafford which helped him out in his playing career and it involves Gary Neville.

‘’Gary pulled me sometimes after training and had a nice word with me. He was top quality in training. He wanted to win every time he played. That was great to see.You have to learn quickly otherwise you get found out in training, which is not a fun thing if you’re against Ryan Giggs. I had my fair share of nutmegs. NemanjaVidic and Rio Ferdinand were brilliant with me too’’ Former Manchester United player, Ritchie de Laet said.

After a 10 year absence from the Premier League, Leicester City made their return to the top tier English League and finished the previous season by sealing the 14th spot and Ritchie de Laet contributed in this feat but it’s far from over as Ritchie de Laet as well as the rest of his teammates are aiming to land in a higher spot in the next season.

Former Manchester United defender Ritchie de Laet says that he is confident that Leicester City can remain in the Premier league despite already being five points adrift of safety.

The club has lost four consecutive matches with the latest defeat coming against Arsenal. Nigel Pearson’s team were not expected to get much from the game against the gunners especially after having suffered four defeat against Manchester United in the previous week. Confidence is not high within the Leicester City ranks, butde Laet expects the club to keep on fighting.

The club had a remarkable season form in which they managed to beat the likes of United in front of their home fans. That form is nowhere to be seen at the moment and Leicester will certainly worry a lot about the destination of next three points. The club has enjoyed only four victories throughout the season and they have the matches against the likes of Manchester City and Tottenham coming up. It is more likely that Pearson will concentrate on matches against teams around them on the table like Hull City and Aston Villa. Leicester take on Hull in the middle of March and this fixture could prove to be a decisive factor in the club staying up.

“The United game was a bonus game, no one was expecting us to take anything from it.But our confidence is still high.I think we can get out of it. You just have to look at the last five performances. We have had three wins out of them so we know we can give teams a good game.We still have everyone to play around us and those are the important games,” said de Laet. After coming through the ranks at United, de Laet left Old Trafford for Leicester three years ago.

Leicester City may be going through a difficult time when it comes to getting results in the Premier League, but that has not prevented them from securing the long-term future of some of the important players.

Defender Ritchie de Laet has been a first-team regular since moving from Manchester United in 2012. The defender may have made only 11 appearances this season, but manager Nigel Pearson is confident that the 26-year-old will be a key player for the club in the coming years. They have come to terms with the player, who has signed a new four-year contract.

The Belgian international spent time on loan at various clubs like Sheffield United, Norwich, Portsmouth, and Preston before coming to Leicester City. He has finally found a solid platform he can develop his football. Leicester are confident that they have secured the long-term future of a player with the best years ahead of him.De Laet admitted that Leicester City took a major risk with him when they signed him permanently in 2012, but he feels that he has promptly rewarded their faith with some good performances that led to promotion to the Premier League in the summer.

Leicester have been slowly slipping down the table after an impressive start to the season.”Leicester took a risk with me at the start when they brought me here without a lot of experience and they stuck with me, so now I’m doing the same thing with them. It’s been nearly the same group since I’ve been here. Most have signed new contracts to stay with Leicester, so we’re a group that are tied together and we’ll fight together to stay in the Premier League,” said the defender to the club’s official site after putting pen on the dotted line.De Laet has made two appearances for Belgium.

Ritchie De Laet did not enjoy the way he got dealt with at Stoke City, but, he says he does not want to show anything to his former employers.

De Laet had been a part of Stoke City for 2 years, but, did not get a single game to play there.

He then got transferred to Old Trafford which came as a surprise for most of the people. He did not play much there either.
De Laet is presently contracted to Leicester City where he has been a regular. He featured for the Foxes the other night against Stoke and did pretty well along with the other fellow defenders to help his team keep a clean sheet. Leicester won that match by 1-0.

In the interview after the game, when De Laet was asked if he was looking to show the Potters how good he is, the 25-year old said, “No, It’s not like that. They never gave me the opportunity. The fans over there are not connected to me. So, there’s not really anything to prove. Obviously, whenever you play against your former team, you don’t want to fail, but, I did not have any extra motivation against them. It’s just another game for me.”

When asked about his time at Stoke, De Laet said, “As I said, I sat outside for almost my entire tenure. So, it was annoying. I had come to England with big hopes and they kept me sidelined for 2 years. Tony was in charge; he bought me, but, surprisingly, never showed faith in me.”

“The scenario at Leicester is quite different from that. The players get fair number of chances and they also have the freedom to express themselves.”

For Leicester City so far, De Laet has played about 80 odd matches.

The illness might not be allowing Robin Soderling to feature on the court, but, it has not kept him away from the game, that’s for sure. While, he is not playing, he is busy directing the manufacturing process of the tennis balls. Yes, he has started his own ball manufacturing company named as RS All Court. It has already got the approval of ITF.

The RS All Court balls have not been used in any of the professional tournaments so far. They will be introduced in the Stockholm Open in the 2015 season.

Soderling told the reporters the other day that he’s in touch with the organizers of some of the other ATP competitions too and he hopes that some of them would give his balls a try.

According to Soderling, his ultimate target is to get his balls being used in a Grand Slam tournament.
When asked what prompted him to make his way into this ball manufacturing field, Soderling said, “Some time back, I was asked by a person ‘which tennis ball is of the greatest quality and is the most comfortable to play with?’ I was not able to answer because I hadn’t had any favourite ball and that was the time when this thing (opening a ball making company) came into my mind.”

“When I was on the bed because of the sickness and was not playing, I began giving it a deep thought and finally concluded that I should try my hand at it.”

“Normally, the ball manufacturers don’t get the assistance of the players. They do it on their own by considering the weight and other things. They have no idea of the player’s feel, but, with me being there with them, the player’s perspective will be put in the process too.”

It has been heavily speculated that Leicester City manager Nigel Pearson will sign a new contract in the next few days in order to cement his position as one of the top managers in the Championship. Pearson helped the Leicester get promotion into the Premier league in the best possible way, as they won the championship with a record points tally. Leicester have been trying to get into the Premier league for several years without much success. All the years of hard work has finally paid off after they were promoted automatically after getting more than 100 points last season.

Pearson only recently looked like keeping Southampton in the Premier league but he was sacked only a few months into the top division after falling out with the board. However, that does not seem to be a repeat of the same this time around after the manager is set to sign a new contract in the next few days. This will be one of the important deals for Leicester in the summer even before they try to bring in new players. Only recently did Pearson confirm that he planned to retain most of his players who did well in the Championship.

The former Southampton manager is thought to have earned just under £ 1 million for the promotion winning campaign. He is seeking a salary rise to around £ 3 million, but it remains to be seen if the club will accept this demand. Liverpool boss Brendan Rodgers recently signed a new four-year contract that saw him earn around the same amount, but Liverpool finished second in the table last season. Despite this, it is believed that Pearson signing a contract is only a few days away.
“Contract negotiations are ongoing. There will be more information soon,” said vice-chairman Aiyawatt.