Brendan Rodgers defends Leicester City team selection against Arsenal

Leicester City manager Brendan Rodgers has said he made four changes to his starting XI against Arsenal in order to give some players a rest after a "tough" season.

Midfielders Wilfred Ndidi and Youri Tielemans started the game at the Emirates Stadium on the bench, although Ndidi did come onto the pitch in the closing stages.

The returning Nampalys Mendy, who made his first start of the season for City, and James Maddison took their places in the starting lineup.

The match against Arsenal was City’s third of the week, following games against Leeds United and Rennes. It also comes just four days before the club travel to France for the second leg of their Europa Conference League tie against Rennes, a game in which they take a 2-0 lead into.

Speaking after the 2-0 loss vs Arsenal, Rodgers said that the selection was to help players recover physically.

“Physically, it’s tough for us, having had so many players out throughout the season, that depth of quality probably isn’t in our squad that a lot of teams maybe in Europe, especially at the top of the league would have,” he said.

“But what we’ll see is the players give everything and you have to, somewhere across the line, try to recover players and obviously today we bring out Wilf and Youri. But we bring in Papy, who I thought did really well, he’s won recently the Africa Cup of Nations, and James Maddison, who is a very gifted player.

“Some of our other guys we haven’t been able to change and what limits us is that our full-backs are coming back, but they can’t play 90 minutes.

"Ricardo Pereira can only play 60, so there’s one sub before you can even think about anything else in the game because he’s coming off and then JJ comes in, so you’re trying to get these guys up