Surgery to rule out Vardy for ‘a few weeks’ say Leicester

Vardy is likely to miss three Premier League matches for Leicester City after manager Brendan Rodgers revealed the striker required a hernia operation.

Vardy will “be out for a few weeks” as he prepares to undergo minor surgery on a persistent injury which has troubled him in games and training, which means he may be absent from the matches against Everton, Leeds and Fulham.

Rodgers has admitted that Leicester’s leading scorer could return sooner, but said the operation had already been delayed from earlier this season.

“As you know, we’ve been managing him over this last year for a number of months, and he’s been absolutely fantastic, but we have a window now that allows him to have a minor operation on his hernia and then he’ll be back within a few weeks. He’ll be out for that period,” said Rodgers.

“It’s one that doesn’t keep him out for too long but it’s just a repair in and around that sort of hernia area.

“It’s one we feel he can’t really put it off much longer. We were hoping to do it a few weeks back but this is a window where we can get it done and that will obviously leave him with a good part of the season where he can be really influential for us.

“We’ve played without him before and won games. There’s no doubt that when you don’t have one of the top strikers in the league available, of course it’s disappointing, but we’ve always tried to rely on the collective.”

Vardy was rested for Leicester’s FA Cup third-round tie at Stoke this month to recover from the injury, and he will miss tomorrow’s match against Championship promotion chasers Brentford.

Rodgers has a number of attacking options in Vardy’s absence, with Ayoze Perez or Kelechi Iheanacho likely to be considered.

Leicester are third in the Premier League table after their impressive 2-0 win over Chelsea on Tuesday night.