No hammer blow for Ranieri

Ranieri chose to focus on his team's "blood, heart and soul" after they equalised through a penalty from Leonardo Ulloa with virtually the last kick of the game.

Leicester have not lost since a 2-1 defeat at Arsenal two months ago, storming to within touching distance of their first title having won six of their previous seven games before yesterday and keeping five successive clean sheets.

Leicester are still clear favourites for the title, leading the Premier league with 73 points from 34 games - eight more than second-placed Tottenham Hotspur who have 65 points and play their game in hand at Stoke City tonight.

Nerves

Ranieri showed no signs of nerves after the game in which goalscorer Jamie Vardy was sent off.

"The sending-off changed the match," Ranieri said.

"But I judge my players not the referee, the referee is not my matter. Our performance was fantastic, this is our soul, we play every match with this, blood, heart and soul, it was magnificent. This point is very important psychologically."

Leicester took the lead through a typically swift breakaway after 18 minutes with Vardy providing the final touch for his 22nd league goal of the season.

West Ham equalised when Andy Carroll converted a penalty and went ahead through Aaron Cresswell four minutes from time before Ulloa saved the point.

Leicester's Danny Simpson also saw it as one point gained rather than two dropped.

Spirit

"We have shown our team spirit and togetherness today," the full back said.

"We will always fight to the death. We cannot control other things, we can fight and work hard. Jeff Schlupp did well to get a penalty and Leonardo Ulloa slotted it away when there was a lot of pressure on him.

"I think that will turn out to be a massive point, not many teams go 2-1 down and do what we did, psychologically it will give us a massive boost."

Moss needed a small escort of security men as he left the pitch at the end of the match, but might have needed a much larger one had Leicester lost the game.

West Ham's Winston Reid, who was fouled for West Ham's penalty, said: "There were some dodgy decisions. Take your pick."

Carroll was adjudged to have fouled Schlupp.

"The one given against me, he was going down before I got to him, 100 per cent he took a touch, the referee has looked to even it out," the striker said.

"It is the same week in, week out," Carroll told Press Association Sport. "The same decisions, bad decisions costing us games.

"It is eight points now that we've dropped. It is not acceptable, to be honest.

"I know that, the manager knows that, all the players know that and a lot of the people standing around, like yourself, know that.

Decision

"I mean, it is a bad decision - it is bad decisions he has given all game. It's not the first time and probably won't be the last."

It is thought likely the English Football Association will write to Carroll for his observations in the wake of his post-match comments.

West Ham boss Slaven Bilic, however, refused to criticise referee Moss but insisted he was fooled into giving Leicester the point-saving penalty.

He said: "I'm not eagle-eyed, I'm not an ex-referee, I'm not Howard Webb, I'm a football coach and I don't want to talk about that.

"On the contrary I would like to say it's hard for him. Not only here but here you have 32,000 people screaming at every contact in the box, every long ball in the box. If it's for the home side it's a penalty or handball.

"If it's in the other box it's cheat, dive or whatever. It's hard, it's extremely hard for him and the game went like crazy and they were losing and so it was extremely hard for him.

"It's easy now to say that the refs shouldn't get influenced by the fans. On paper it is easy to say that. Actually it's real life. Of course it's not a penalty."