Brendan Rodgers
The “outstanding” Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall successfully took on the task handed to him by Brendan Rodgers to earn victory for Leicester City against Crystal Palace. Academy product Dewsbury-Hall set up the first for Ademola Lookman then struck the second, his maiden Premier League goal, to bag the three points for Rodgers’ side. The manager was delighted he had made such an impact on the scoresheet.
Brendan Rodgers said: “Kiernan was outstanding. He’s a young player, since he’s come into the team, he’s everything that would represent a team of mine. He’s very honest, he’s got great industry, he runs, works, presses, and then he’s got quality. He’s scored in Europe, but we’ve been saying to him as a number eight, the job is to create goals and score goals. He’s made a lovely pass for Ade’s first, and his goal was absolutely first class. I’m delighted for him because he’s made a real impact with his honesty and quality. There’s no question he’s become very important for us. It’s his intensity and urgency in the game. I felt we needed freshness, but the likes of him, Youri, and Madders, those guys are real pivotal players for us. We’ve recovered some of the other ones. The team’s got a really good focus and good football idea at the moment. Even making the changes I felt we could still be fluid and I felt the players demonstrated that.”
The win means City have reached the 40-point mark, overtaking Palace in the process to move to ninth in the table.
Brendan Rodgers added: “I thought it was an excellent win and performance. Crystal Palace were off a really good win and performance, playing against Arsenal. They have really good athleticism in the team, so we knew we were going to need energy in the team and a really good mentality and urgency in the game, and I thought we were excellent. We started the game really aggressive, pressed really well, and then some of our football was really good. At times we were a little bit loose with our passing, especially in the first half, but that’s natural with one or two players coming in, maybe having not played so much. But at other times, our passing, our movement, our positioning was really good. At 2-0 we were good in the game. They get the penalty, and Kasper is unfortunate, he’s made two saves. We then had to show resilience as well as our football qualities.”
