Benkovic ‘not ready for Premier League’

FILIP Benkovic is simply not ready to play in the Premier League and that’s why he has been loaned to Cardiff City.

The Croatian centre-back, below, was sent to the Championship club on a season-long deal last week despite a Leicester City injury crisis at the back.

Caglar Soyuncu and Daniel Amartey are now expected to be on the sidelines for some time, while Jonny Evans and Wes Morgan were both doubts ahead of the game against Aston Villa.

If they had not been fit, Wesley Fofana would have been the only available centre-back in the squad.

But the injury situation was not serious enough for Benkovic to remain at the King Power Stadium, with manager Brendan Rodgers admitting the “brutal honesty” of the matter is the 23-year-old is not yet of Premier League standard.

“You’ve got to look at the needs of Filip,” Rodgers told his press conference yesterday. “He’s not ready to play in the Premier League yet. That’s pretty clear. That’s the brutal honesty of it.

“It’s one where he’s a player who needs to get out and play games and that’s his own mindset on it as well.

“Our agreement was that he would get out and play and of course if we were really, really down on numbers, he wouldn’t have been able to go out.”