Leicester stars handed New Year’s Eve pass by Claudio Ranieri

Manuel Pellegrini was happy with Manchester City’s first clean sheet without Vincent Kompany this season despite the goalless draw against Leicester extending his side’s winless away run in the Barclays Premier League.

Vardy led the way as Leicester ended 2015 level on points with leaders Arsenal. The 27-year-old forward has been blunted by a succession of injuries that have interrupted his season.

And former Birmingham City midfielder Savage feels that the north London side will eventually leapfrog Ranieri’s high-flying Foxes in the coming months.

But Ranieri’s team silenced their critics with another superb performance as they more than held their own against City, and the coach said he was pleased with how they bounced back.

The Italian manager also expressed his delight at the unexpected turn of events this season: “This league is very insane…nobody wants to win the league”.

Leicester’s N’Golo Kante and Albrighton were off target, Fuchs tested Hart with a stinging shot while Manchester City’s best effort after the break came from an Otamendi header that Schmeichel turned around the post.

“We handled him quite well here in the first game [in August] and our defenders will need to be alert because he is one of those players who only needs one chance to have an impact on the game”.

“We hope that he can recover as soon as he can but it’s very important until we solve this to defend the way we did in this game”.

“We’re a very good team ourselves, we’ve proven that at the back end of last season and we’re halfway through this season and we’re still up there in the mix”.

“We are starting now to build our team”, said Ranieri.

He said: “I will not sell anyone, everybody will stay and I’ll give another two or three gifts to (coach) Vincenzo Montella, as he deserves it. We have been following Kramaric for a year now”.

The fact that Leicester City go into 2016 level on points with league leaders Arsenal is a huge achievement. They have been so poor and I can’t see them winning many games in the second half of the season. We have a job to do because we make a lot of mistakes and we have to improve a lot.

“It is a game we could and should have won but we did not”.

“We were very solid and defended well against a hard team”.