Brendan Rodgers confirms Tottenham postponement request rejected

Brendan Rodgers has revealed that the Premier League rejected Leicester's request to postpone their upcoming meeting with Tottenham, despite the Foxes having nine players ruled out.

The Leicester squad has been decimated by injury, illness and coronavirus cases in recent times with the absences set to leave them without a fit, senior centre-back ahead of the clash.

Spurs also requested that the game be pushed back as they are still recovering from a mass Covid-19 outbreak that saw games against Rennes and Brighton postponed last week.

However, despite pleas from both sides for the Premier League to intervene, the game is set to go ahead on Thursday.

"We’ve looked at that. Unfortunately for us, we weren’t granted any dispensation, which was disappointing," Rodgers said in his pre-match press conference.

"We’ve wanted to support the measures, but when we wanted support for the extreme situation we were in, it’s disappointing not to get the support.

"We were touch and go for the Newcastle game. We’ve picked up a couple of injuries as well, that are Covid related because we can’t rotate the team. We’ll put out the best team we can."

He added: "There will have been games called off with more players available than what we have but we weren’t given that privilege. It’s a very testing time of the year anyway. To not be given support is a little disappointing."

Among those out for Leicester are Jonny Evans, who was taken off partway through his side's 4-0 victory over Newcastle on Sunday, and regular defensive partner Caglar Soyuncu, who has a hamstring issue.

Daniel Amartey, who would normally deputise, is not available either having only just come back after testing positive for coronavirus. Jannik Vestergaard is also missing, while James Justin is yet to recover from an ACL injury and Wesley Fofana is still sidelined too.

Wilfred Ndidi is likely to occupy one of the centre-back slots, but Brendan Rodgers will be scratching his head trying to work out who will play alongside him. Ryan Bertrand and Timothy Castagne have some experience in the role, though only in a back three.

Also absent for the Spurs game are Kelechi Iheanacho, Ayoze Perez, Hamza Choudhury, Filip Benkovic, Ademola Lookman and Vontae Daley-Campbell, all due to Covid-19 or illness.

For more from Matt O’Connor-Simpson, follow him on Twitter!