Defiant Foxes vow to stick together

Two of Leicester’s players today put on a brave face and insisted the club was fully focused on Saturday’s crucial Barclaycard Premiership encounter with Birmingham.

Keith Gillespie, Frank Sinclair and Paul Dickov remain in a Spanish prison over claims they carried out a serious sexual assault during a club trip to the resort of La Manga last week.

The trio, who have spent six nights in Sangonera jail near Murcia, are due to face a Spanish judge today.

The whole affair has sent the club, battling against relegation from the Premiership, into turmoil but senior players Les Ferdinand and Muzzy Izzet today stressed minds were still on the job.

Ferdinand said: “Footballers are pretty resilient. It’s not been the best experience at the club. We know we’ve got a big game on Saturday, but the boss has picked us up and we are looking good for Saturday.

“Obviously we need all the players we can but we have players missing all the time through injuries.

"We have to cope with whoever is left to play and try to keep the club in the Premiership.

“We’ve got to pull together. This club has been dragged through the mud in the past week but we’ve got to push ourselves.

“Morale has been low but as the game draws closer we start concentrating on that.

“We are there to be shot down. We take the glory when it is there and we have got deal with this.

“I think people know we have tried to stick together all season and one thing we can count on is we will stick together.”

Izzet echoed his team-mate’s sentiments and claimed that the players learned to cope with adversity after going through administration last season.

The former Turkey international said: “It’s been a big distraction but we had that a lot last season with the club going into administration. The club were in terrible trouble but we pulled through that then and we will have to now.

“We have now got an important game on Saturday. We’ve got 11 cup finals to try to keep the club in the Premier League, and that’s what we are trying to do.

“We’ve had a lot of bad publicity this week but we had to go through a lot of that last season.

“We have got to deal with the situation and the best way to do that is doing the business on the pitch.”

Ferdinand was irked by suggestions that the club should apologise over the incident, pointing out that no-one has been found guilty of offence.

He said: “Why should we apologise? Nothing’s been proved. If we apologise what are we apologising for? What’s gone on last week is unfortunate but we won’t apologise until it’s sorted.

“If you’ve picked up the papers you’ve seen this week these boys have already been found guilty.”