Leicester have to ‘fight’ for safety after Gary Rowett’s ‘flat’ King Power start

Leicester boss Gary Rowett said the club has to fight if they are to avoid dropping out of the Championship.

Second-half goals from Anis Ben Slimane and Ali Ahmed gave Norwich a 2-0 win at the King Power Stadium and kept the Foxes in the relegation zone with 11 matches of the season remaining.

Leicester have won just once in the league in 2026 – against fellow strugglers West Brom on January 5 – and Rowett’s first home game in charge could not inspire them to victory.

“Today, it just felt flat from the start, if I’m being honest, it was really disappointing,” said Rowett.

“There was never really a period where I felt we were working hard enough on and off the ball to create moments and create pressure on Norwich.”

Rowett had inspired some confidence by starting his tenure with back-to-back draws on the road at Stoke and promotion-chasing Middlesbrough, but his first home match was preceded by a small protest from fans and ended with a chorus of boos.

“You see a lot of people here that are desperate to get out of the situation we’re in, but we are where we are,” he said.

“As a group, as a team, as a club we’ve got a fight to get out of it.

“We’ve got good players, but there’s no point having good players if we don’t do the basics of the game. This is the Championship, this is a different type of league.

“There has to be a physical element in the games in order to win them. Today, we lacked a little bit of physicality, I thought, and athleticism.”

The Canaries came into the game with 14 players sidelined and just one fit senior striker at their disposal in Mathias Kvistgaarden after selling Josh Sargent to Major League Soccer side Toronto and losing in-form Mo Toure to injury – with top scorer Jovon Makama and Ante Crnac already out for the season.

But midfielders Slimane and Ahmed popped up with the goals to give Norwich a much-deserved seventh win in nine league outings to move further clear of the relegation battle.

Canaries boss Philippe Clement said: “This is a hard place to come, a squad with a lot of quality, a lot of experience also.

“So for controlling the game almost fully, I think, today was a really, really big performance for my squad.

“They played a really good game tactically, technically, physically and also mentally.

“To do it in the right way and to make the right decisions in the right moments, to find the right spaces, to keep a clean sheet. So a lot of positives today again.”

Clement has picked up 36 points from 20 league games since taking charge.

“I never thought about not being safe, not from the first day I stepped into the building,” the former Rangers boss said.

“I knew, of course, with nine points out of 15 games that we were in a tough place and it took a long time, although we had good results to get out of this bottom three.

“But we’re not calculating because we were really confident also that we would succeed at the end of the road.”