Brendan Rodgers reaches last-16 of European competition as Leicester cruise past Randers

Brendan Rodgers will complete three years in charge at Leicester this weekend and has finally proved a point to his Euro sceptics.

Rodgers has taken a club into the last 16 of a European competition for the first time, at the sixth attempt, after a comfortable victory on the Jutland Peninsula.

James Maddison’s two brilliant second-half strikes from distance were the highlight, with Leicester’s hopes of a first clean sheet in Europe this season wrecked six minutes from time by a mistake from goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel.

Leicester will discover their opponents in the next round of the Europa Conference League on Friday lunchtime, with Rodgers determined to create more historic moments for the club.

Since his appointment in February 2019, he has secured two fifth-placed finishes in the Premier League, last season’s FA Cup triumph over Chelsea - the first in Leicester’s history - the Community Shield and returned the club to European football.

This inaugural competition has now taken on added significance for Leicester, with the winners automatically qualifying for next season’s Europa League group stage.

Rodgers said: “We’ve had a couple of years in Europe now and we want to go as far as we can in this competition.

“We’re very focused on doing well and we’ll take anyone we get in the next round.

“We would have liked the clean sheet but Kasper was very unlucky with the goal.

“From a dead-ball situation James has got a great feel and they were two excellent goals. He has that quality and we’ve seen him do it a number of times.”

After strolling to a 4-1 victory in Leicester last week, this was always likely to be a relatively simple assignment against last season’s Danish Cup winners.

Randers were experiencing only their