Graeme Souness says Leicester City can forget about a top-four finish if their performance against Newcastle United was anything to go by.
The Foxes suffered a shock 4-2 defeat to the Magpies, who at one point led 4-0 in a victory that effectively seals their Premier League safety for another season.
Speaking on Sky Sports, Souness was distinctly unimpressed with Leicester’s performance and, with the Foxes’ final three games against Manchester United, Chelsea and Spurs, said he would not be surprised if they do not win another game this season.
He said: “If that’s the Leicester you’re going to get between now and the end of the season, they’re not going to win any of those games.
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“They’ve got a final, they need to get back to high-intensity football.
“Chelsea have got a super hard run-in, they’ve got one eye on the FA Cup final, one eye on the Champions League final.
“West Ham have, on the face of it, an easier run-in, but you just never know – you’d have said prior to the Leicester game that Newcastle weren’t going to get anything from it.”
Souness also hit out at Brendan Rodgers’ claim that Leicester are struggling with a young squad, arguing that they are more experienced than the Foxes boss is making out.
The pundit also said the Foxes could not blame Jonny Evans’ late injury in the warm-up for the defeat.
He said: “They had five 24-year-olds and one 20-year-old.
“The 24-year-olds have plenty of experience, they know what they need to do to win games at this level and they were nowhere near it.
“So I’m not buying it that it was the young players – one 20-year-old. I was really experienced at 24.
“It wasn’t Jonny Evans’ fault that they were lacklustre in the first 20 minutes. If you’d have switched the TV on and didn’t know who was playing, you’d have thought the team in yellow were at home and near the top of the league and that the team in blue were near the bottom.
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“They never got started in that early part of the game, Leicester. Newcastle were on the front foot and bossed it.”
Souness subsequently disagreed with fellow pundit Neil Lennon that the Foxes would be looking forward to their FA Cup final with Chelsea next weekend, arguing it was a different situation from when he was playing.
He said: “I would because the players I played with would have relished the thought but this is a group of players – you can use nice words but I’ll choose the word bottle.”