Rodgers explains why Vestergaard refused a transfer

Leicester City’s Danish defender Jannik Vestergaard decided to reject a transfer. Here is what Brendan Rodgers commented on the giant CB’s decision.

No pre-season, rushed into the side, immediately injured, and a string of poor performances from the side left the coincidence Dane down the pecking order. It certainly does not help cult-favoured Daniel Amartey appeared to perform harder if exceedingly weak both technically and pace-wise.

Leicester City’s Danish giant

Vestergaard is behind Jonny Evans, Wesley Fofana, Amartey, and Caglar Soyuncu – another fallen star – despite being perfectly suited to Rodgers’ style of football. The CB has fallen so far the club agreed to sell him to Fulham.

However, according to Rodgers himself, the player chose to reject that move. As per LeicestershireLive, here is what the Northern Irish gaffer has said about the situation:

"“Jannik had an opportunity to move on. He didn’t want that opportunity. He wanted to stay”"

A simple reasoning. The Dane wants to stay with the Foxes, fight for his place, and likely, he does not wish to lose the wages he is on. According to FBRef, the Danish international is on around £65k a week. These are the wages of someone who should be challenging to start every fixture.

To be fair to the player, I do not feel him staying is the worst possibility. Amartey is the weakest link in our defence. Vestergaard is nowhere near as bad as supporters are making him out to be. It is true we have not seen brilliant performances, but he is not the sole reason we lost matches, the whole team was bad and put a lot of strain on the defence.

The same situation has befallen ‘Cags’. The Dane and the Turk are good defenders who were put under excessive strain due to injuries, all-around poor performances, and poor tactical decisions from the gaffer. We can even prove this statistically.

As Sofascore illustrates, he made 3.5 clearances and 1.5 tackles per game and has a 100% dribble success rate. This puts him in the 98th percentile for clearances, 87th for tackling, and 94th for dribbling. These are exceptional stats.

On top of this, SmarterScout’s stylistic ratings rate the defender highly on link-up play and disruption. To put it clearly, Vestergaard was put under a lot of work last season, but when released into his natural style, he flourished for short periods. The CB is a ball-carrier and should be utilised as such.

So, although he does not wish to leave, be that to fight for a place or keep his wages, Vestergaard should not be sold before Amartey. Certainly, a lot will depend on if Fofana is sold, as Leicester cannot sell too many senior team defenders in one window.