Blame me for failure to win at Palace because I picked team
BUT RODGERS SAID DISPLAY WAS GOOD ENOUGH FOR THREE POINTS
ANY blame for Leicester City’s failure to beat Crystal Palace lies with Brendan Rodgers, the manager said after naming a much-changed team.
Rodgers, as expected, dropped several key stars to protect them from injuries as City headed to Selhurst Park for their second game in just over 48 hours.
But Rodgers felt his rotated side produced a performance that was worthy of three points, even though it ended with just one.
“I trust the players, and the performance should have been enough to get the result, to get the win, so we accept that,” he said.
“If there’s any blame, it’s certainly on me, because I pick the team.
“The ones we felt could play without the risk were Kasper (Schmeichel), JJ (James Justin) – he could play seven games on the spin, he’s a machine – and Jonny (Evans), he was someone who we needed because the other centre-halves weren’t going to be available for us.
“We had Cags (Soyuncu) coming back in and we were hoping to get him 20 minutes or so if the game allowed it, and Wesley Fofana, he needed to come out because we’ve been managing an issue with him and his knee.
“At left-back, Timothy Castagne is just back from a hamstring, so you can’t put him at risk from playing another game in a short period of time. Wilf (Ndidi), you see how important he is for us, and he’s starting to get game-time, but again, we don’t want to risk him, we’ve got all the measurements of where he’s at and what zones he’s in, so we have to be careful with him.
“Harvey (Barnes) has a great mentality and great physicality, so he’s done great over the course of a couple of games. James Maddison wasn’t fit, so he couldn’t travel.
“(Jamie) Vards is managing an issue as you know, so to start him was always going to be difficult, but we got him into the game for halfhour.
“And then Marc Albrighton, he’s played the last number of games.
“So that’s the reasons behind it. If we felt we could play the same players all the time, the same team at the weekend, we would have done.” Fofana is expected to return for Sunday’s trip to Newcastle, although there is slightly more doubt over Maddison.
City are also hoping Cengiz Under returns to training this week.