How Leicester boss Brendan Rodgers knew of Jack Grealish’s absence

How Leicester City boss Brendan Rodgers knew of Jack Grealish’s absence, possibly using FPL transfer updates to gain insider knowledge.

The pre-match build up for the foxes’ clash with Aston Villa was dominated by the absence of Jack Grealish, as you would expect. The Villa captain was a huge omission from the match day squad that was not mentioned by any official sources prior to the team sheets being released. But just like Brendan Rodgers, I became aware of this news on Friday afternoon. How you ask? Because I’m obsessed with fantasy football.

Anyone who takes FPL seriously knows there are multiple ways to get an upper hand on the casual player whether it be early team leaks, fixture rearrangements or in this case injury news. The rumours began to spread about Grealish potentially missing the clash with Leicester on Friday afternoon, with claims he was injured being made by unverified accounts on twitter but at this point the validity of these tweets was still unknown.

How Fantasy Football exposed secret for Leicester City

The situation became much more interesting when a twitter account by the name of @insider_fpl – a bot that tracks the fantasy transfers made by Premier League players and staff – noticed three players and two staff members transferring Grealish out of their side at late notice. Matt Targett, Conor Hourihane (on loan to Swansea), Neil Taylor, Scott Adey-Linforth (Performance Analyst) and Rob Marshall (Physio).

Players have become increasingly vocal about their love for the Fantasy game, we’ve seen Patrick Bamford, Matt Targett and Leicester’s James Justin all regularly talking about their teams on social media. Therefore paying attention to who they are moving in and out – especially teammates – can be quite a useful insight.

Although it’s unlikely Rodgers is an avid fantasy player when he has a real team to manage, he did confirm that the Foxes were aware of the Grealish rumours in his post match interview on Sunday. This suggests someone in his inner circle had passed the news on.

Villa boss Dean Smith also mentioned he was aware that word had got out around his captain’s injury and he was not impressed:

"“I was made aware that it came out on social media outlining he wasn’t going to play and, if it’s coming out of our training ground, I will find out where that’s coming from and reprimand who it’s coming from.”Via Leicestershire Live"

Leicester will of course be grateful for the insider knowledge and the absence of the Villa talisman which may have been a contributing factor to a very comfortable 2-1 victory where the Foxes always looked to have another couple of gears if they needed them.