Leicester City are in a fight at the bottom of the table. In many ways, that’s a good thing from their point of view, as they’ve occupied bottom spot for most of the season, and they’ve not really looked like leaving it.

But vitally they’re still in touch, and last weekend’s win over West Ham - as well as the fighting performance in the 4-3 defeat away to Tottenham - will give the Foxes hope of staying up. And it’s fighting performances that will do it.

They currently sit six points from safety - Six points from Hull in 17th and seven points from Aston Villa in 16th - but Leicester have two games in hand. They have one game in hand over most of the league, but with Villa and QPR playing out a pulsating 3-3 draw in midweek those two teams have played more than the rest.

The problem for Leicester is that their own game in hand is against Chelsea.

The Foxes may have been hoping that Chelsea would have already won the league by that point and would have their flip-flops on, but that doesn’t look like being the case. Chelsea haven’t been in the best of form themselves, and they have crunch games against Arsenal, Man United and Liverpool to negotiate. So it looks like the Leicester game will be important for them.

[ad_pod id='football-friends' align='center']

Leicester can ill-afford to write off games at this stage, they need all the points they can get. But the Chelsea game is only one game, they have other fixtures. The fixtures they do have are not easy but, if they want to stay up, most of those games are ones they would be marking down for potential points. 

Chelsea aside, Leicester face Southampton, Newcastle and Swansea at home - not easy games, especially when you’re at the bottom. And the trip to the Hawthorns at the weekend is a tough fixture, too. They might fancy their chances of nicking points against these teams though. The odd win and draw, especially the home games, shouldn’t be out of the question.

But that makes only five of their eight remaining games. The other three are probably more important. They are real ‘six-pointers’ away to Burnley and Sunderland and at home to QPR on the final day. Sunderland on the penultimate matchday, and then QPR the following week look like huge games for the Foxes, but they have to make sure they are still in touch by the time these games come around.

That means doing something they haven’t always done this season - battling hard.

I don’t mean that the players haven’t been putting in the effort - in fact, they’ve tried harder than most. But Leicester have won only five games all season and drawn seven. 11 of their 18 defeats have been by one goal, and turning even some of these defeats into draws would have made their position much, much better. As it is, even four wins from these eight games might still not be enough to save them.

But if they do manage to win the big games against those around them, and if they do manage to pick up some battling points against the bigger teams in those other fixtures, then that might be enough to save them.

The season now is all about how many points they can accumulate. It might be too late to completely write off games that they can’t win, but it’s not so late that draws aren’t a good enough result. Keeping the points tally ticking over is the best thing Leicester can do now, and scrambling draws are much better than valiant defeats. More valuable to the club at any rate - not just in terms of their points accrued stats, but also in terms of their bank balance. Relegation is a costly business. 

The Foxes are in a dogfight, but that’s right where they want to be. But the thing about dogfights is that you battle hard and you take every little edge that you get. In the run-in, if they can draw some of the games that earlier in the season would have ended in defeat then the Foxes might just be able to emerge from the the dogfight this season, ready to do it all over again next year.

[ad_pod id='ffc-video' align='center']

[ad_pod id='ricco' align='center']