Leicester City star's return puts Brendan Rodgers in wildly different position to last summer

Wilfred Ndidi’s return to pre-season training has raised hopes Leicester City will be able to field a fully-fit first team when the new Premier League campaign begins.

The defensive midfielder joined his team-mates in training at Seagrave on Wednesday as he looks to put his serious knee injury behind him. A 50-50 challenge away at Rennes in March left Ndidi requiring surgery and ruled him out for the remainder of the season.

It proved to be a big blow to Brendan Rodgers with Ndidi one of the few midfielders in the squad the manager trusted. With Papy Mendy unregistered for European games, the workload mounted for Youri Tielemans and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, with both players’ form waning as fatigue took hold in the final few weeks.

Tasked by Rodgers to do so in order to get him up to speed, Ndidi has been working on his recovery during the summer, spending a week in Dubai at a warm-weather training camp then flying back to Leicester for individual sessions at Seagrave last week. He is now ready to work alongside his team-mates and will hopefully be able to hit the ground running for when competitive games begin.

That would be a huge boost for City, who only have injury doubts over Ryan Bertrand as things stand. Albeit, it remains to be seen if any of the internationals picked up knocks while representing their countries.

But the squad is in a much healthier position compared to this time last summer, when they had James Justin out with his ACL tear, Harvey Barnes in recovery from a double knee operation, Timothy Castagne sidelined following facial surgery, and Jonny Evans struggling to get to the bottom of a foot issue. Then, during pre-season, Wesley Fofana broke his leg.

Rodgers will hope a healthier squad allows