An injured hamstring prevented Jamie Vardy from taking a penalty as Leicester City lost their shoot-out with Liverpool to be knocked out of the Carabao Cup. It was another night of injuries for City, with Ricardo Pereira and Caglar Soyuncu also forced off.
Brendan Rodgers said: “We couldn’t take him off, but he felt his hamstring with about half an hour to go. He’d usually be our number one (penalty taker). We had (Kelechi) Iheanacho and (Jannik) Vestergaard who have only been back a day but we had to put them into the game. We had (Marc) Albrighton at right-back, (Wilfred) Ndidi at centre-back, but we kept going right to the end and that shows the spirit they had.”
With those changes, City switched to a back five of Albrighton, Ndidi, Vestergaard, Ryan Bertrand and Luke Thomas for the final half-hour, a period in which Liverpool dominated the game as they tried to come back from 3-1 down. Their pressure eventually told, with Takumi Minamino getting the equaliser deep into injury time. Rodgers rejected the assertion that his side invited pressure though.
Brendan Rodgers said: “No, we had a right winger as a right-back, we had a midfield player at the back, and then the strength of Jannik is different to the strength of Cags. It was going to be a challenge. When we lost Cags, we couldn’t go into a back four. That was difficult. We fought them off heroically in terms of how the guys battled but didn’t quite have enough to see it through. Wilf was outstanding but mistimed his jump at the end. We were always going to be under pressure.”
