Jamie Vardy: Goals are good but points are the main thing
Points are more important than goals to Jamie Vardy, the Leicester City striker has said as his side find themselves in a crisis.
Leicester City are 17th placed going into just their seventh game of the Premier League season, with only a sole 2-0 win under their belt against Brighton and Hove Albion at the King Power Stadium.
The Foxes have been up against four of the previous season’s top six sides already, as a consequence of which they have just not been able to get the desired results.
Jamie Vardy, however, has individually had contrasting fortunes, netting five goals in six league games, including a goal against Liverpool last week. It may have been six (plus a point) had he converted from the spot.
Personal landmarks, though, are not really important to the England international if they don’t make a difference for Leicester City. He said:
"“It’s always good to get goals but the points are the main thing.“We’ve only got four on the board up to now. Bournemouth’s massive for us. If we can get the win it’s a good three points before we get a little break with the internationals.“We’re playing well, we’re just not getting any points so I think it’s time we started playing well and picking points up.“We didn’t play too well at Huddersfield and managed to get a point so we’ll have to get back on the training field and work on how we can hurt Bournemouth and hopefully come away with a win.“We will watch the Liverpool game back and see where we’ve gone wrong. As a group, we’ve just been saying, we can’t go into each game needing to score four or five goals to win a game.“As a team, we’re aiming to pull it together so there’s no breakaways against us or making it easy for teams.“I know we’ve had some tough games – Arsenal, Man United, Chelsea and Liverpool but every game is tough in this league so we just need to knuckle down and pick some points up.”"
Shinji Okazaki, meanwhile, has been in a league of his own. The 31-year old has already scored four goals across all competitions as compared to the six he managed in each of his last two seasons in the East Midlands.
Like his striking partner, Okazaki is more concerned with his team’s results too. The Japanese international believes that his team are well equipped to deal with the current situation and that they’ll be “okay”. He said:
"“I wasn’t scoring a lot before but I’m scoring now I feel a lot better, I feel a lot more confident.“I haven’t done anything much different but I’ve been here for a few years and I’ve been trying to get closer to goal.“But we still only have four points and it makes the next match against Bournemouth very important.“It’s difficult but we have overcome this sort of problem in the past. We have handled this before so I am sure are going to be okay.”"
Jamie Vardy and Shinji Okazaki will both have a massive part to play if Leicester City are to beat AFC Bournemouth later today. The fixture kicks off at 15:00 BST.