Soccer-Puel backs Leicester to end poor run

Feb 22 (Reuters) - Leicester City must maintain their mental focus and get back to winning ways as the Premier League campaign heads into the final stages, manager Claude Puel said.

Leicester have won one of their last five league games to slip to eighth in the table, a point and a place behind Burnley ahead of Saturday's match against 19th-placed Stoke City.

"It will be an important, crucial game," Puel told the Leicester Mercury. "The last result (a 5-1 defeat at Manchester City) was not good enough. It is important to come back with good spirit and attitude and to come back strong."

Following their humbling at leaders City, Leicester beat Sheffield United in the FA Cup to book a quarter-final place.

"Let's hope we find again a good result because we are now close with different teams and all the games and points will be very important," Puel said.

Leicester captain Wes Morgan urged his team to take it one game at a time.

"It's about putting that behind us and the only way we can do that is by getting a positive result in our next game against Stoke and we want to show what we can do," Morgan told the club's website. (www.lcfc.com)

"All we can do is our job, keep winning games, keep picking up points because there are not many games left between now and May." (Reporting by Aditi Prakash in Bengaluru, editing by Ed Osmond)