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Cape Town - Leicester City manager Claudio Ranieri has credited his team for another impressive showing against Arsenal, despite slumping to a 2-1 defeat at Emirates Stadium on Sunday.
The Foxes took the lead on the stroke of halftime when Jamie Vardy was fouled in the box and tucked home the resulting penalty, but a red card for Danny Simpson 10 minutes after the restart put them at a disadvantage.
Theo Walcott then drew the Gunners level in the 70th minute before Danny Welbeck, on as a late substitute, banged in the winner in the fifth minute of added time.
"It was a good performance," Ranieri said in the aftermath. "We tried to do our best. We lost the match but I think if we played 11 vs. 11 we could have scored also another goal.
"I give compliments to my players because it was the same performance as Manchester City. There we won, but today we lost. I'm happy with our performance, not with the result, but the performance was good.
"We're disappointed because we saved two great goals with Kasper [Schmeichel] and then just with the last chance they had they scored a goal. Of course everybody is sad but I told them from the beginning, the performance is important and the performance was outstanding."
Despite the loss Leicester remain top of the Premier League standings, with the north London duo of Spurs and Arsenal lurking two points behind and Manchester City six points off the pace.
"For us it's not important now to think about whether we're top of the league or not," the Italian tactician added. "We want to fight and we want to continue to show this kind of performance and at the end we'll see where we are."
