Leicester City manager Brendan Rodgers has been left embarrassed by his side’s performance for the first time after their 4-1 humiliation at Nottingham Forest. City, the FA Cup holders, were dumped out by the Championship side, with a torrid nine-minute period in the first half in which they conceded three goals doing the damage.
Brendan Rodgers said: “It was an awful performance and I have to apologise to the supporters. To come here, the first game between the two sides for a long time, a great atmosphere, in derby games you need authority and you need physicality. Those two were sadly missing from our performance. I said to the players after that for the first time since I’ve been here I’ve been embarrassed. It was an embarrassing performance. I feel for the supporters and the excitement of coming to here. We brought the FA Cup into our team meeting today so the players could see what we went through last year to win this competition, to remind them of the day at Wembley and the journey, and what it takes to win a trophy like that. I was looking to provide that motivation and extra desire to come out here today. We went away to Stoke, away to Brentford, Brighton, Manchester United, Southampton and then Chelsea, European champions. We come here today and we were really disappointing.”
Asked to put his finger on the main issue in the side’s performance, Rodgers said there was a lack of hunger, again suggesting, as he did on Friday, that a refresh of the squad is needed in the summer to get around it.
Brendan Rodgers added: “It’s hunger. I said it before about having changes in the squad. It’s a lack of hunger. Ok, we are missing players but we didn’t have the physicality to press in certain areas of the pitch and then you get destabilised when you make basic errors. Collectively and individually it was not great. We still have a big part of the season to go. I hope the players can go away and reflect. I’m always very optimistic but we can’t mask over that, that’s a huge worry for me today. We weren’t stable in our defending and then we get rocked by the second goal. Collectively the basics and fundamentals of the game weren’t there for us.”
