Mace promises no 'whitewash'
Mace insists the Premiership outfit will not attempt to "whitewash" the issue but stressed the players involved have all pleaded their innocence to all charges of criminal wrongdoing at the Spanish resort.
"Obviously it's a regrettable episode for Leicester City and possibly for football in general," he stated. "It is going to cause us some damage. We need to deal with that in the best way we can.
"It is a cause for serious concern."
Mace did open the briefing by admitting it was difficult to make any detailed comment while the Spanish authorities are undertaking their investigations into the alleged incidents, but felt compelled to respond to the media outcry to the allegations of sexual assault against three German women.
"I'd like to stress we view this situation with utmost seriousness," Mace affirmed. "The club has, and will, be conducting a full internal investigation into the issue alongside and not in conflict with the investigations by the Spanish authorities.
"We take it extremely seriously. The club has taken many strides in recent years to establish ourselves at the forefront of community relations in this community and national football as a whole and realise this is damaging to us.
"We have a duty of care and responsibility to the club and our players. We have been in regular contact with the players over the past 48 hours.
"They want to stress that they protest their innocence most strongly and vigorously on all counts of criminal accusations made against them in the past 24 hours. We've welcomed the news that three of the nine players helping the Spanish police with their enquiries were effectively cleared of the principle charges levelled against them.
"Our thoughts are with the six players detained overnight by the authorities. Tim Davies, our chief executive and Micky Adams are in Spain at the moment.
"Those players will be again appearing before a Spanish judge today to decide whether the accusations mean the players have a case to answer. In the short term, we wish to bring those nine players home as quickly as practically possible and concentrate on getting back to football and our game with Birmingham a week on Saturday.
"It's certainly not a good position for us at this moment in time and we won't shy away from that.
"We accept people querying the wisdom of going back out to La Manga but it's the premier sporting facility of its kind in Europe. We were welcomed back with open arms and, as far as we were concerned, it's a business trip.
"It was a decision made for footballing reasons but I appreciate a lot of people are drawing analogies and comparisons to what happened when we last visited La Manga four years ago."
The six players still detained in Spain are Paul Dickov, Matt Elliott, Lilian Nalis, Frank Sinclair, Keith Gillespie and James Scowcroft.
Alan Cork is taking training with the rest of the players but there is clearly a cloud hovering over the East Midlands club at the moment.
City were involved in another incident at La Manga four years ago when a fire extinguisher was allegedly set off by former Fox Stan Collymore.
