Leicester City’s internationals have returned in good health and there are no fresh injury concerns for Steve Cooper ahead of his side’s trip to Crystal Palace.
City had a dozen players representing their countries over the past week, and all except Bobby De Cordova-Reid were back at Seagrave by Thursday. The Jamaica winger is not due back until Friday.
But while some of those players are still in recovery from midweek outings, there are no fresh injury concerns. It means there are just three players absent for the game at Selhurst Park: Patson Daka and Jakub Stolarczyk, who are both in recovery from ankle operations, and Odsonne Edouard, the loan striker not eligible to play against his parent club.
“No (there are no fresh injuries), the players have come back from international duty,” Cooper said at his press conference on Thursday. “Some of them are still recovering from games, which is normal because some had Tuesday games, and some of them had long travel as well.
“Bobby De Cordova-Reid is still not with us because of his schedule, we’ll see him tomorrow. It’s normal. Every team will lose a lot of players and will be staggered in their returns. We’re not different, we’re just adapting.”
On Daka, he added: “It’s a long-term recovery. He’s out of his boot and off his crutches. He’s looking more normal in terms of how he’s walking around the place. Both trainers are on, there’s not a boot on one foot. He’s on course but he’s still a while away.”
Because of the internationals, Cooper only had half of his squad to work with over the break, but it was an opportunity to cater training to individuals. For players like Jamie Vardy and Facundo Buonanotte, that meant working on their strength and conditioning.
Cooper said: “Vards, he trained for a week before he picked up the injury and then trained once before he went into a Premier League start. We’ve used the two weeks to get some training into him while preparing him to be available for a game as well. The content of the training has been good for him, and his application is great and how he looks after himself.
“He played 90 minutes before the end of the game and if you think about the end of the game, he nearly got a penalty, so he wasn’t lacking legs in those final stages. That’s credit to his professionalism. Hopefully he will be even stronger now.
“Facundo is another one, he has come here off not a too active pre-season and there are definitely some parts of his body that we have to manage even though he’s a young player. We’ve tried to get some good work in to strengthen him up a little as well.”
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