Brendan Rodgers has said Leicester City must get to the bottom of Jamie Vardy’s knee injury, after revealing his return has been hampered because the striker is still in discomfort when striking the ball. Vardy has trained this week but will miss Leicester’s Europa Conference League quarter-final first leg at home against PSV Eindhoven on Thursday.
Rodgers has said Leicester cannot afford to be dismissive of the competition, which is in its inaugural season, and said winning it would be “prestigious” despite how it is viewed compared to other European tournaments.
Vardy sustained a knee injury during the victory against Leeds at the beginning of March, in his second game back following a hamstring problem, but Rodgers has said the 35-year-old remains in pain in his medial collateral ligament. Vardy had initially been expected to be out of action for a month.
“It’s hard to put a timeline on it,” Rodgers said. “He can still feel pain in the knee. But it’s just when he’s striking the ball there is an issue, so we have to try to get to the bottom of that.
“I have just had a quick chat with Jamie, he had been outside and he’d been running in straight lines, but when he was opening up the MCL, when he was striking the ball, he had a little bit of pain in that. I’ll have to speak with the medical team to see where that is at. It doesn’t sound as if he’s too close to being back.”
Of the game, Rodgers said: “We don’t have a rich history in European football so to be in the quarter-final is deemed a real occasion.”
Timothy Castagne said Leicester must treat PSV, who are second in Eredivisie, with respect and insisted he and his teammates will not have any superiority complex. “We can’t underestimate anyone,” Castagne said.
“I think some people think that because we are from the Premier League and they are from the Eredivisie that it’s going to be easy for us but they are a good team with good players. They are doing very well so we have to play our normal game. If we do, we will go through.”
Rodgers will welcome back the full-back Luke Thomas, who was forced to withdraw from England Under-21 duty last month with a hamstring issue. Castagne sustained a double fracture in his eye socket during Belgium’s Euro 2020 opener last summer but said the injury, from which he returned in August, did not alter his mindset.
“I thought it would but I wasn’t that scared to go into duels again,” he said. “Now I am just happy to be able to play. It has been good so far.”
