Enzo Maresca insists Leicester are not the league’s only title candidates despite James Justin’s goal sending them eight points clear at the top of the Sky Bet Championship following a 1-0 win against Sunderland.
Justin was the unlikely hero for the Foxes, heading home Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall’s corner from the left after 12 minutes to seal the points and an eighth successive league win.
The home side spurned numerous chances to extend their lead as both Stephy Mavididi and Kelechi Iheanacho saw shots come back off a post while Black Cats substitute Abdoullah Ba spurned a glorious chance to equalise late on.
Maresca said: “We are happy but we are not thinking we are the only club in the Championship trying to get promoted.
“In football, the normal thing is to lose more than you win. In this moment we’ve won 12 out of 13, it’s not something normal, the players and the fans deserve to enjoy it after the relegation.
“We know that these records are important if we reach our target, these records show what the players have done and that it is not something normal, but we’re still in October.
“We would like to have the same situation in March and April, it’s fantastic, we are not the only team building to reach the title and in our case we changed 14 or 15 players from last season.
“It was a very difficult game, it’s probably the game I’m most happy with in terms of handling a different kind of game, we were very aggressive and were quite good on the ball.”
Sunderland slipped to a third straight league defeat, although Black Cats boss Tony Mowbray was impressed by his side’s performance and believes opponents Leicester are likely to win the title after their record-breaking start to the campaign.
Mowbray said: “We believed we could come here and win the game, we missed some really good chances. I asked the players to challenge themselves and see if they want to play in the Premier League one day.
“We competed really well, we just lacked the composure required at the top end of the pitch. If that’s the level we play at every week, we’re going to win enough games.
“We just need to improve the end product. We can score goals, we missed some golden chances to put the ball in the net.
“We’re not finishing above Leicester City, I think Leicester will win the league. Burnley had the same amount of points as we do at this stage last season, the results will take care of themselves.
“We put a lot of work into defending set-plays because we’re not a huge team, a free header has cost us two games on the bounce.”
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