Leicester City: How Brendan Rodgers will cope with so many injuries

How will Brendan Rogers cope with the injuries at Leicester City? Additionally, with upcoming Europa League and FA Cup fixtures, what will be the Foxes’ realistic targets? Find out now!

The Premier League witnessed the Transfer deadline day on the 1st of February, a day later than usual. The excitement buzzed throughout the day with expectations and speculations amongst the fans. A few teams managed to pursue their targets and add credibility to their squad with worthy replacements and some did not quite get the players they wanted within the timeline of the winter transfer window of the 2021 season. Let’s have an in-depth look at what went down in Leicester’s Transfer Deadline Day.

For the King Power club, this particular transfer window had certainly looked crucial as the injury crisis that led to misfortune the club last year still seems to drag on till this season. We must remember how it had impacted the hopes of Leicester fans to slip out, failing to secure a top 4 spot in the final day of the Premier League. So this year Leicester City was linked with many familiar faces during the closing week of the transfer window with the likes of Christian Eriksen, Nathaniel Chalobah, and Ainsley Maitland-Niles as their primary targets in the form of striking loan deals.

The Club was also adamant to let a few players out on loan for the rest of the season such as Matthew James to Coventry, Filip Benkovic to OH Leuven, and Josh Knight to Wycombe. Furthermore, Islam Slimani went to Lyon on a free transfer and Demarai Gray to Leverkusen for approximately two million euros. Hamza Choudhury was speculated to leave for Newcastle but that did not come through.

During the whole deadline day, Leicester City peeps expected to add one or two players for their gruelling season as they will soon be facing the fatigue of fixture congestion playing Round 5 of the FA Cup with Brighton and then Round of 32 in the prestigious UEFA Europa League against Slavia Prague.

Things look gloomy as Leicester has been missing their main striker Jamie Vardy who is out for a couple of weeks due to his Hernia operation. Along with Vardy injuries kept coming in similar to last season as a few weeks prior Praet was out for 3-4 months for a hamstring injury, Ndidi, Fofana, and Castagne were also facing hamstring issues and they are expected to return till mid-February. These injuries would certainly call for panic buy but it came as quite a shocker when the Deadline day ended for the foxes without any additions to their squad.

Christian Eriksen was expected to leave Inter due to his lack of success there, but he did not come aboard as there were no agreements reached due to his salary issues. Chalobah was not a particularly needed addition that the east Midlands side needed to have benefited from, as he did not look to bring anything new to the squad. Maitland-Niles was not loaned as Arteta considers the foxes to be a direct competitor and does not want to strengthen their rivals at this point which is understandable.

So despite a loss against Leeds on Matchday 21, City choose to trust their extended squad to fulfil their aspirations. While the an addition of a striker certainly looks on the horizon in the summer transfer window for Brendan Rogers & co. At this point, it certainly looks Leicester hopes to overcome their problems in the upcoming weeks purely on the passion of the players by trusting the process that Brendan Rogers is so brilliant at; rather than spending the wallet now.

It was only a few months ago that Leicester unveiled their state-of-the-art new training ground which shows the club likes to invest in the future more than anything. Of course, building such a spectacular training facility would take a toll on the club’s finances during the already scarce financial situation that many of the clubs are facing in this COVID-19 pandemic. It’s a bold move to not make a move at all rather to blindly invest, but the question remains, will it pay off? We will have to wait and watch. The foxes play Fulham next in their Premier League fixture tonight.