Boss Mick McCarthy admitted that Town were beaten by a better team after their 3-0 defeat at Leicester. Goals from Jamie Vardy, David Nugent and Chris Wood saw the league leaders to a comfortable victory.

“We were beaten by a better side, that’s for sure,” McCarthy said. “Unfortunately for me and for us we contributed to it and they don’t need any help.

“You probably know my view on the first one in terms of the final pass but we had a corner kick, we’d just had our best spell in the game. I think we’d had the best chance with Skusey at the edge of the box, I don’t think we’d had any other chances up until then.

“We went backwards rather than keeping it on top of them and we end up being negative, give it away and they scored."

Although it was Jay Tabb's backpass which played goalscorer Vardy in on goal, McCarthy wasn't too harsh on the midfielder.

“Tabby shouldn’t have been put in that position, that’s my view. We should have been putting the ball in for another cross and we should have been in their third.

“That was where we made the mistake, so I’m not pointing the finger at him, I think he’s great, I think he’s been fabulous for us, Tabby.

“I just thought we'd got into the game. Leicester are better than us, we’ve lost to a better team.

"They don’t need any assistance to win their games and I thought on the second goal again we had the ball in the final third and we lost it and it ended up in the back of our net. Disappointed.”

He said the home side showed little sign of tiredness having fought out a tough 2-2 draw at Forest on Wednesday: “If you can tell me that Vardy and Nugent were tired in the first half I’ll show my arse in Burton’s window!

“That’s all psychological babble that, that they might be tired, you just hope that that’s going to be the case.

“They’re top of the league, they’re winning it by a street, they’re all very, very good players, fit healthy young men and they can cope with it and you can cope with it when you’ve got players with the ability that they’ve got.”

McCarthy felt his team improved after the break: “I thought we played well in the second half. They were 2-0 up, there are two sides to that. They’re 2-0, do they keep going and try and get a third when they don’t need to?

“I thought we played better, I thought we had some opportunities to do better than we did but didn’t take them and we suddenly got punished by a better team.”

Quizzed about his interest in bringing Ryan Tunnicliffe back to Town on loan from Fulham, as TWTD reported yesterday, McCarthy was keeping his cards close to his chest.

“We’ll see. We’ve just lost to Leicester, it’s not the end of the world, they’ll piss [this division], they’re streets in front of the rest of us. We’ll regroup on Monday and see and get ready for Birmingham.”

Tunnicliffe was left out of the Cottagers' 18 as they drew 1-1 at West Bromwich Albion.

Leicester manager Nigel Pearson was delighted with the victory and the display: “A good result. A good all-round performance against a decent side. I’m very pleased with the outcome.”

Photo: Action Images

commuterblue added 09:17 - Feb 24 typical over reaction on here. anyone would think we have just lost at home to the bottom side not away to league leaders. I was dubious when we appointed mccarthy (holloway was my preference). But he has firmly won me over. There are not many managers I would rather have.
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Sindre94 added 15:49 - Feb 24 @Blue041273 I dont mind scoring from dead ball situations, but the fact is that we hardly create anything from open play. That is my worry.
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