Brendan Rodgers backs Leicester’s Patson Daka to make his mark in Premier League

The Zambia striker has scored five goals in his last two Leicester games

Nick Mashiter
Friday 22 October 2021 15:57 BST
(AFP via Getty Images)

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Leicester boss Brendan Rodgers saluted bookworm Patson Daka and insisted he will make his mark in the Premier League.

The Zambia striker has five goals in his last two games after his historic four-goal haul in the Europa League.

The Foxes face Brentford on Sunday following their thrilling 4-3 win at Spartak Moscow on Wednesday.

Daka’s four strikes made club history as he became the first Leicester player to score a European hat-trick and the first player to bag four in one game for 63 years.

The 23-year-old moved to Leicester from RB Salzburg in the summer and Rodgers is impressed with his character and expects him to shine in the top flight.

He said: “When he came in and had to do his quarantine he was going to be stuck indoors for 10 days, the club were great in asking him what he wanted – tellies, PlayStations or whatever else – and he didn’t want anything. Just some books.

“He wanted to read, find out about Leicester – he probably read Vards’ book maybe. He is just such a great guy, full of life and loves being here. His game is going to continually improve.

“He has a natural ability to sniff out a goal and that will be proven here in the Premier League Patson was always one we wanted to give that little bit of time to adapt, to our way of working, the league.

“He has scored his first Premier League goal, the first Zambian player to score, and then to score four goals was an incredible individual achievement.”

Marc Albrighton is likely to be out for up to three weeks after being injured by Aleksandr Lomovitskiy’s poor tackle in Russia but Ayoze Perez is available after sitting out the trip to Moscow with illness.

Wilfred Ndidi is out for another month but James Justin will resume training soon after recovering from a serious knee injury. Wesley Fofana remains out with a broken leg.

Leicester are 11th in the Premier League, having beaten Manchester United 4-2 last weekend after an inconsistent start to the season.

Rodgers added: “At the moment, without a lot of preparation time it’s cutting out mistakes.

“If we can cut out the mistakes and not give goals away we’ll be OK. We have shown from the attacking front we have a constant threat and score goals.

“We’ll improve as long as we stop conceding silly goals.”

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