Boss pressing on with his shake-up
BUT CITY WON’T HAVE ANY NEW SIGNINGS MAKING TRIP TO EVIAN
LEICESTER City’s pre-season trip to Evian will provide Brendan Rodgers with an opportunity to undertake another aspect of the “healthy shake-up” he planned for his squad this summer.
City head to Lake Geneva today for a training camp in a repeat of their plan from three years ago.
Unless there is significant progress over the next couple of days, City will not be taking any new recruits with them, with the club yet to make a signing this transfer window.
Rodgers said earlier this year he wanted a “healthy shake-up” of his playing squad, and hoped for five or six new faces.
But while progress has been slow on that front, he has now said part of the revamp of the team will be to remind players of his ideologies, which he believes he will be able to do in Evian.
On the benefits of the trip, he told LCFC TV: “It’s a continuation of the fitness. Evian was a very important pre-season trip for us when I first came in here in 2019, we got a lot of great work done on and off the pitch.
“This season, I’ve talked about a healthy shake-up of the squad and a big part of that was based around the reconnection with our culture after a difficult couple of years where the pandemic has left a lot of teams a bit broken.
“This is an opportunity for us to come together and reconnect again and continue with our pre-season work.”
Rodgers will also want to work on his team’s ball retention, with the manager disappointed by their play in possession during the 2-1 friendly defeat to Notts County on Saturday.
Harvey Barnes put City into the lead, but two goals from set-pieces meant they started with a defeat.
Rodgers said: “Fitness was the key thing we were looking at. I’m just pleased the players got through it and there were no injuries. Towards the end of the half they were starting to feel it.
“Fitness is important. We obviously want to be much better with the ball and have more fluency, and on a hot day we have to keep the ball better than we did today.”