Lita Enjoying The Ethics Of Teamwork

At the start of the Royals` first Premiership campaign, many might have argued that Leroy Lita might have thought there was an I in team.

Admittedly I was one of them, Lita always seemed to like to go it alone; passing? It seemed the striker hadn`t heard of it. He`d scored a fair in the Championship but now in the Premiership well it`s a whole different ball game (excuse the pun!) His team ethic was shot to pieces and without that the goals dried up and Leroy had to spend a spell on the sidelines.

But when he was called upon to rejoin the starting line-up Lita was a changed player, working hard, passing the ball, and holding up play to help his team-mates!!!

Since then Lita has scored, well I`ll be honest, I`ve lost count! A lot, a brace at Man City, one at Chelsea, an abundance in the cup! And a lot more on top of that, since the start of 2007 he had a spell of a goal a game until sometime in February.

And since Lita has became a more active team player he seems to enjoy his game a lot more, against Arsenal the England Under-21 forward looked sharp and was pleased with the team`s performance:

"We had a game plan and we stuck to it. But we gave a penalty away and they then pushed on from there and got a second.

"We gave it a go towards the end, but it was too little too late. We were definitely never dead and buried.

'We always give it a go, no matter what. Our heads never go down and the lads showed good spirit again.

"But I thought Arsenal were a lot better than us and deserved the win. We would have done well to get a point as they played good football.

"But it`s still disappointing because I hate losing. It doesn`t make it any easier that it is against a team like Arsenal. Losing is losing.

"It would have been nice to be the first team to come here and win. That`s what we tried to do. We never came for a draw. Now we have to move on."

On a lighter note, Lita was ecstatic about meeting a goal scoring idol of his Thierry Henry:

'I spoke to him (Henry), he said we were unlucky. He's a cool guy,' Lita told the club's official website.

'It's nice playing at places like Arsenal, they're the kind of stadiums we want to come to all the time. We worked hard last year to get here, it wasn't just given to us.'

Click here to join in the debate on the club forum.