Jamie Vardy has spoken out about Claudio Ranieri’s dismissal

“I could see in their eyes that they were up to the fight in the warm-up”, said the 53-year-old.

The first half belonged to Craig Shakespeare’s men as they looked like the team that romped to the league title last season.

Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp refused to make excuses for his side’s poor display as they slipped to a 3-1 defeat at Leicester City.

Senior Leicester players, including Vardy, have rallied against suggestions they plotted the Italian’s downfall since his departure, and Shakespeare saw signs that a big performance was forthcoming during the build-up.

The first sign that Leicester’s players might be about to wind the clock back came on the team sheet, where Shinji Okazaki replaced Ahmed Musa from last week’s 2-1 Champions League loss away to Sevilla. It helped propel Leicester out of the relegation places and up to 15th, two points above the drop zone with 12 games remaining. But it was Vardy who followed up his goal in Seville last week by netting again, latching onto Marc Albrighton’s through ball before keeping his composure to pass in at the near post.

Asked what had gone wrong this season, he added: “I can’t put my finger on it”.

“It is right that you’re asking those questions because it wasn’t as if we’d just seen 11 fantastic footballers”.

“It’s not that Leicester were over aggressive tonight, I think we were not physical enough”.

“If we play our best we will be hard to play against whoever”. We advise that all users switch to using the new Disqus comment system as soon as possible to ensure a smooth transition.

“I can honestly tell you we have tried to win games in the past”. We’ll never know, but a valuable three points is a vital march towards safety for the Foxes.

Liverpool’s response was to finally string some decent football together, and Coutinho netted from 15 yards 21 minutes from time, side-footing home after excellent creative work from Can. “In the end we could not find the 100 per-cent clue so we sent him to a specialist who found a few things, not directly in the knee where he had the pain”.