Rodgers drops hint that Celtic loanee Benkovic will be in his Leicester plans next term

Add as preferred source on Google

Leicester City manager Brendan Rodgers has hinted that Celtic loanee defender will form part of his plans next season, according to the Leicester Mercury.

Rodgers acrimoniously left Parkhead to join the Foxes last month and Benkovic, who joined Leicester last summer for a reported £13m forms another link between the clubs, as he is with the Hoops on a temporary basis until the end of the season.

The Northern Irishman is clearly a fan of Benkovic, having brought him north of the border last summer, and has apparently said that the defender will be assessed with a view to giving him a crack of the whip at the King Power Stadium next season.

Rodgers stated: “He has done very well. All the loan players come back and we will decide from there. Benkovic, at Celtic, he is only 21 but has been playing first team football since 16. He has good experience. I have never been one for age.”

Rodgers’ departure to Leicester and the animosity of the situation already made it unlikely that Celtic would be able to engineer another loan deal for Benkovic next season.

Their main hope might have been that Rodgers didn’t want to throw someone so young into the Premier League.

But Leicester have a young, promising array of attacking players and Rodgers – with the preference for youth that he has – was always likely to try and add to that at the back.

He knows Benkovic so well and clearly has faith in him, so is the perfect man to ease the Croat into English top flight action – which is a blow to Celtic’s hopes of a deal for Benkovic, which the Leicester Mercury reported back in November they were looking into.