Brendan Rodgers has revealed his shock over Caglar Soyuncu’s injury with Leicester City’s medical team and the defender deliberating over how best to approach his recovery.
Brendan Rodgers said “It was a shock because initially when we got reports back from Turkey, we thought he would be back within a week. But we’ve had our scans here and it tells a different story. He’s gone again to London to look at the extent of it, and it’s a case of a decision between him and ourselves in terms of what’s going to be the best course of action, whether it’s conservatively managed or whether he wants to have the operation. The medical team are in discussion with the player and are trying to find the best solution, and then we’ll go from there. I think for every coach or manager, you want all your players who go away to come back fit and healthy. The ones who don’t, you’re disappointed. We had a collaboration with the Turkish federation who sent what they thought was the prognosis, but we had to look at it when he came back and it was deemed a more serious injury. You want the players to go away and think only of their country and play, but you don’t want them to come back injured. It’s unfortunate for Cags. He slipped the day before he was due to play the game. He’s been ever-present since I’ve come here and this is virtually the first period of games that he’s missed. So that’s my disappointment, that he’s not available. It’s pretty much the same squad as before. The only one is Slimani who is unfortunately not in our European squad, so other than that, it’s the guys that are fit at this moment. The squad had to be handed in much earlier than the Premier League squad, and unfortunately we were thinking that he wasn’t going to be here. That’s the reason why. The Turkish winger is still trying to get to the right fitness level. Just in terms of football fit, he needed to get up to speed. He’s adapting to our training and work and over the next few weeks, he’ll get some more game-time. He looks good in training, but naturally it takes a little bit of time when players move to a new country, and settling in, so I anticipate over the next few weeks, his game-time will be more than what it’s been.”
For their Europa League opener against Zorya Luhansk on Thursday, City will also have Daniel Amartey, Ricardo Pereira, and Wilfred Ndidi out, while Jamie Vardy is also set to watch from the sidelines again with Rodgers confirming that his squad will be much the same as that that lost to Aston Villa on Sunday. The only difference will be the exclusion of Islam Slimani, who made his comeback after nearly three years at the weekend, but who has not been registered in the Europa League squad. Sunday’s defeat saw Wesley Fofana make his debut, leaving just Cengiz Under as the only one of City’s three summer signings yet to make a start for the club.
City boss Rodgers has said that the Turkish Football Federation told the club Soyuncu would be out for just one week after he sustained an injury while on international duty. However, further scans conducted by City showed an abductor muscle had come off the bone, ruling the centre-back out for up to three months. Soyuncu has visited a specialist in London, and a decision will be made shortly on whether he requires surgery.
