No Fresh Injury Concerns For Man City Test, Says Rodgers
- Leicester City entertain Manchester City at King Power Stadium on Saturday (3pm kick-off)
- Manager Brendan Rodgers has revealed there are no fresh injury concerns ahead of the clash
- Defenders Jonny Evans and Jannik Vestergaard are also 'progressing well', the Foxes manager says
- Ryan Bertrand is back after testing positive for COVID-19 last month and Ricardo Pereira has trained
- James Justin (ACL) and Wesley Fofana (fibula fracture) are longer-term absentees
The Foxes welcome Pep Guardiola's men to Filbert Way in a 3pm kick-off on Saturday after the first international break of the 2021/22 season, which saw several of the Club's first team players represent their countries, mostly in 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifying.
Leicester's manager confirmed that Ryan Bertrand is back in contention after testing positive for COVID-19 last month, while also revealing that defenders Jonny Evans (foot) and Jannik Vestergaard (knock) are also working well towards their returns.
"We have most of our players now back and available, obviously some are still short on fitness," Rodgers confirmed on Thursday. "The likes of JJ (James Justin) and Wesley Fofana are probably the only two that are out at the moment, in terms of fitness. Ryan Bertrand will be back and available.
"Jonny Evans and Jannik Vestergaard are progressing very, very well. We’ve had a good international break with getting players [game time] and increasing their fitness level, so hopefully all those players should be fit and available."
On the likelihood of Evans and Vestergaard featuring soon, he added: "That’s what we have to assess going into this last 24 hours, just where they’re at. We had a training game last week here at the training ground that they both played in and they came through that.
"They’re not going to be 100 per cent, of course. We now have only three substitutes, so there’s a strategy going into the game. We have to be as sure as we possibly can in terms of how long the players can last, but we’ll see where we’re at before we finalise the team.
"Over the course of the next couple of weeks, they’ll be training more, hopefully involved more in the games, and they can build their fitness up."
The Foxes manager was also asked about Ricardo Pereira, who was withdrawn in the victory at Norwich City late last month, and he added: "He trained today. He was out on the pitches yesterday and came through a session today and looked very good."
Rodgers was pleased to see members of his squad feature internationally over the past fortnight and believes some of them will benefit from the game time at such an early stage into the new season.
"It’s just a build up over the start of the season," the Northern Irishman explained. "We had lots of players missing and whatnot, but we’ve made a solid start, winning two out of three games.
"The exciting part for me is that we’ve hopefully got players returning and, with more game time and more fitness, that performance level I’m pretty sure will increase. The players away over the international break will gain that bit of fitness.
"You want them to get game time to increase their fitness and hopefully they all come back fit and ready and then we’ve got a really exciting period through to the next international break. We’ve got some top games and the start of our European campaign."
All times BST.