Claude Puel insists fans will see a better Leicester City side against Wolves than they witnessed at the end of last season.
The City boss said he is confident that his young, creative squad will provide an exciting future for Leicester but has urged supporters to give them the chance to develop and improve.
Performances at the King Power Stadium towards the end of last season left fans frustrated and, at times, bored as the squad struggled to adapt to Puel’s style and the club’s shot at Europe slipped through their grasp.
This led to unsavoury scenes at the end of City’s defeat to West Ham, the penultimate home game of the campaign, where fans booed and left before the final whistle, with hardly any staying behind for the squad’s lap of appreciation.
Despite speculation he may not survive the summer, Puel has been backed with more than £100million of signings and, after a full pre-season, showed signs of huge promise despite defeat in the opening game at Manchester United.
To go with the exciting talents already at the club in Harry Maguire, Wilfred Ndidi, Ben Chilwell and Demarai Gray, City added attacking flair with James Maddison, Ricardo Pereira and Rachid Ghezzal as well as highly-rated young centre-backs Filip Benkovic and Caglar Soyuncu.
“I have a lot of confidence in this team and squad,” said Puel. “We have a lot of qualities. After, it is to put all good ingredients on to the pitch to perform and to show all this quality.
“If we look at our transfer window, we have a lot of players who are comfortable with ball, who have quality with space, who are fast. I think it is important to play with these players.
“We will see this step by step over the season. And we will improve all the time. To keep a good solidity on pitch and be creative also, because we have the players to play an exciting game for the future.”
The performance at United, even in defeat, has led to a rejuvenated Blue Army, who has seen the first blossomings of what looks like a new City identity.
Puel insists that is not the case. While the principles of how he sees City playing are the same as they were last season, now he has had a pre-season with new players who can better implement them.
“It's not a new identity,” he said. “Last season it was the same, but sometimes we performed this way, sometimes it was not enough.
“We finished the last games with a good intensity, for example, against Arsenal and then Tottenham. Our identity was playing forward, with intensity and good ingredients to put the opponents in danger.
“It was difficult for the first game because we had different fitness levels and we saw in the second half against United that we lost a little of our intensity.
“If we can maintain the level of intensity for the 90 minutes, it will be difficult to play against us.”
If this sense of hope and promise is to remain among the City faithful, and for Puel’s critics to be kept at bay, the Frenchman needs to make sure the levels of performance shown against United, a game in which his side dominated large spells with little reward, can not only be maintained but translated into wins, points and position in the table.
City missed their shot at Europe last season when, for much of the campaign, had looked like the ‘best of the rest’ outside the top six. Leicester’s aim will be to win the ‘other league’ this season.
Puel will not admit that, of course, although Maguire has already done so . For the City boss, he is keen to temper the expectations on his young squad. He wants to see them perform and grow in confidence, like a school teacher seeing his pupils learn. The rest, he hopes, will follow.
“We have a team to perform for the future and to develop,” said Puel. “We will see if we can take points to progress in the season. For the moment, I cannot fix an objective. They are a young team, they need to improve with good confidence to continue to develop together.
“But we are sure we can perform. We can perform a lot. But we must be careful not to put a lot of pressure on this team at the beginning. They need to play with freedom and to develop their play.
“I am sure, and I am confident, about our quality for the future.”
