Recruiting from overseas is riskier than signing players from Premier League rivals, Brendan Rodgers has said in a potential hint to Leicester City’s summer business. A busy transfer window is expected at the King Power Stadium in the off-season with Rodgers having already outlined his hopes for a “healthy shake-up”. He has suggested there could be five or six new arrivals, with the same number heading for the exit.
Brendan Rodgers said: “Sometimes the nature of the Premier League, even if players do have that competitive edge, the physicality might catch them out. The Premier League is such an intense league. There’s a real urgency about the Premier League, and that’s why you see lots of really, really good players who have come into the league – and you know their talents because you’ve seen them in Europe – they just don’t quite do it here. And then they go back into European football, where the edge comes off it a little bit, where it’s not quite the intensity, and they look fantastic players. That’s happened throughout the Premier League, at lots of clubs. People come into clubs and you think: ‘He’s going to do really well.’ But then the intensity of the league catches them out and they go back into a European league and they can deal with it. It’s trying to, as a recruitment team, find out as much information as you can and try to minimise the risk. But it’s always a risk, bringing a player in.”
After a season in mid-table, albeit one in which they still harbour hopes of challenge for the top seven, Rodgers will look to get City comfortably inside the top six again next term. That means adding players who have that extra something.
Brendan Rodgers said: “There is a difference. Top players, they want to win. They have a competitive edge. There’s some very good players who will have a career in the Premier League, but they will never be top players, because they don’t have the competitive edge. You look to create that, but you can’t always give that to people. That’s something that a lot of them need to have.”
