It is a surprising thing but when a print of the Premier League table is thrust in front of Claudio Ranieri, with Leicester City right there in prime position, this highly significant graphic appears to barely register with him. A man who is not normally short of animated reactions shows barely a discernible flicker.

Beneath the caricature, Ranieri – the quirky gestures, the colourful expressions, the hint of a kindly old funny guy played by Steve Martin – is a serious football man. While romance may have its place in his concept of the game, the currency of hard realism underpins his daily work. The question of whether Leicester’s aspirations for the season have shifted because they find themselves on top of the league makes Ranieri sharpen his focus to ensure his answer has maximum impact. “Forty points,” he says firmly.

The mantra is important enough to demand repetition. “Forty points. I can’t change our project at the moment. Our goal right now is to maintain the Premier League. Be solid with two feet firmly on the floor. Forty points. When? I don’t know. From now until beginning of January we will play against some very big teams and we will see what happens.

“Our fans can dream. That’s OK. Football is about dreams, about feeling a special sensation, giving a surprise and inspiring joy. I know when Leicester win our fans go to their jobs with smiles. But those who work in football must work. The others can dream.”

Ranieri is in his tracksuit, sitting in his neat office at the training ground. On the walls are various clues to his life nowadays. There’s a framed work of intricate Thai art (presumably a gift from the club’s owners), a large roadmap of the Leicestershire area and a green slab of a tactics board with both teams set up in a 4-4-1-1 formation. He considers the upcoming group of tests that begins with Saturday’s first v second tussle against Manchester United with a knowing nod of the head. The next six games also include Chelsea and Manchester City at home and trips to Everton and Liverpool. It’s an obvious change of key compared with Leicester’s high-pitched blast so far, which has been mostly against teams from the bottom half of the table.

Ranieri describes himself as very curious to see how this stretch of the season will go. In discussion with his players this week he made a point of stressing that anything can happen, that they should not get too hung up about positions and let that affect the way they love to play.

“I told the players: ‘We can win, we can lose, we can draw but I want to see the same mentality,’” he says. “Nobody can expect us at this level after 13 matches. But match by match I keep thinking of the fantastic poem by Rudyard Kipling, If. Victory and defeat has the same face.”

This is the attitude that allows the 64-year-old to easily shrug off the scepticism that surrounded his appointment in July. “Really?” pondered Leicester’s legendary son Gary Lineker. Others were less polite. “I could understand it,” says Ranieri. “Maybe with a new team not long promoted from the Championship people think it’s better to have a younger manager. But I think if you look at my career it was a good choice. Because I like a project.”

He was on holiday in the south of Italy with his family – he has recently become a grandfather – when the call about Leicester’s interest came. He packed his suitcases and left his family to continue their break while he went to meet his potential new employers. “It is an ambitious programme,” he says. “That’s important to me because my character is ambition.” More than just liking the sound of the project, he also felt what he describes as “good electricity”.

Match by match I keep thinking of the fantastic poem by Rudyard Kipling, If. Victory and defeat has the same face

It has been extraordinary to see Leicester take the relentless energy and spirit that characterised their escape last season into this campaign. It is one thing summoning that do-or-die mentality in the special conditions of fighting relegation. It is quite another to play that way at the start of a long campaign.

“I ask my players: ‘We have to play like we are desperate – not every match, every second,’” he exclaims. “I want this philosophy. The day my players relax I get crazy. They know that. I think I am a nice man but also I am demanding.” That manifests itself every day on the training pitch as he is an absolute believer in the idea you must train with the same intensity as you intend to play come matchday. There is not much letup in the pace and ferocity of their daily drills. “That is our way. If we slow down, it’s not Leicester, it’s another team,” he says.

Ranieri watched all the matches in their survival run under Nigel Pearson before even meeting Leicester to outline ideas. He recognised that retaining the character of the team and adjusting slowly, delicately, to build on that was the way forward. Nine players have featured in nine or more of the 13 Premier League games so far. Ranieri cackles at this. “Before I was the Tinkerman and now it’s too much the same!”

He wanted to develop a rapport with the players quickly and he found this easier than when he first arrived in English football 15 years ago, at Chelsea, simply because he has a better grasp of the language. “The first time it was difficult for me to speak with the players. It was always translated through Gus Poyet, Gianfranco Zola, Marcel Desailly … The first team meeting I spoke in English was at the last match of the season. All the players clapped me.”

He arrived at Leicester and was better able to connect. “I look into people’s eyes,” he says. He told the players he liked the hunger he saw. “You don’t need so much time to understand my philosophy,” he explained. “It is to improve the tactical side, because I am Italian and for an Italian tactics are fundamental but I love the English spirit. My idea about football is to play well but even if you can’t always play well one thing I want is your character, your spirit. That is all I can ask of you.”

He asks the same of himself. He has had to at difficult moments in his career. He is in his 30th year in management so has experienced the extremes and more or less everything in between. Before Leicester, he had a short spell with Greece with few redeeming features, which was one of the reasons critics felt underwhelmed when he was chosen for the King Power dugout. “I played four matches with Greece, I think I trained three days for each match – 12 days! What I can do? I had to renovate everything. A lot of people blame me. But after me, it was worse.”

Back to Kipling. Some people, on the back of a calamity just after their 63rd birthday, might have wondered whether the managerial road was coming to an end. Not Ranieri. Not for one second. “Because I am a positive man,” he stresses. “I am my own biggest critic. But I work hard and believe in myself.”

He accepts the show-me-your-medals culture may not recognise some of the progressive work he is most proud of. Promotions with Cagliari, Fiorentina and Monaco. Helping teams to improve and get on to the right track for future success such as Valencia, pre-Abramovich Chelsea, Juventus returning from Serie B. They were not always teams in the right condition to win titles but they were in a position to improve, which is what he threw himself into. That is why he feels well matched to the challenge at Leicester.

Leicester City’s Claudio Ranieri is in his 30th year of management. Photograph: John Robertson/The Guardian

Some perspective on his career comes with a list of elite strikers he has managed – topical because of the man of the moment, Jamie Vardy. Here goes: Careca, Zola, Batistuta, Crespo, Del Piero, Trezeguet, Totti, Forlán, Falcao, Berbatov, Vardy … Ranieri is momentarily misty eyed. “Ahh. They are all in my heart.” Then more names come to him. “Do you remember Francescoli, the Prince? Is Milito there?”

Ranieri heads out to the crisp air and training pitch, to work. He won’t have a family Christmas. “I want Christmas with my players,” he says. “I get crazy when I don’t have a job. When I have the pressure of football management I have the right balance in my life.”