Daniel Iversen to keep Leicester City spot as Brendan Rodgers details Danny Ward one-to-one

Daniel Iversen warms up for Leicester City before their game against Brentford

Daniel Iversen will get a run of games to impress as Leicester City goalkeeper after Brendan Rodgers gave the Dane his backing.

Iversen made his Premier League debut in the 1-1 draw with Brentford on Saturday afternoon, Rodgers dropping number one Danny Ward. The manager revealed post-match that he’d had a long chat with the Welshman prior to the Chelsea defeat in which he conceded three goals, Ward partially at fault for Ben Chilwell’s opener.

A solid defensive performance in front of him meant Iversen did not have much work to do at the Gtech Community Stadium, the Dane beaten by a deflected first-half strike from Mathias Jensen. But he will get more opportunities to show his shot-stopping ability.

“It’s always important to give a goalkeeper a good run of games and I felt Danny Ward deserved that,” Rodgers said in his post-match press conference. “I had a long conversation with him before the Chelsea game in terms of what I expect, the standard I expect and what I want from my goalkeeper.

“Daniel Iversen has played a lot of football over the past four years and he’s progressed. He’s continually grown. I’ve seen him in training, he’s a brilliant shot-stopper and he’s good on crosses. He has a calmness.

“Wardy took it great, as I would expect. We had an honest conversation. He was disappointed in how he’s done in his time. He can reflect now on it.

“Daniel will come in and play and we’ll go from there. He’ll get a run of games. It’s important he feels he’s not just judged on this performance. I thought he did really well. He was really assured.”

The result was secured by Harvey Barnes’ second-half equaliser, a point ensuring that City will go into the international break outside of the relegation zone. Rodgers was pleased with tenacity and defensive showing.

He said: “It breaks the cycle of results we were on and I think we thoroughly deserved it. The second half we looked like the team that could go on and win it.

“I was really pleased with the spirit and the fight and the resilience of the team. We were unfortunate to go behind, it was two deflections on the goal. We had to defend a lot of set-pieces today and I thought the players did that extremely well. We were really aggressive and really organised.

“Harry Souttar in particular was outstanding. Places like here where they load the boxes with set-pieces, your centre-halves need to be able to defend. Him and Daniel (Amartey) were very good but Harry in particular got his head onto everything.

“As a team we defended well. I don’t think there were too many chances for either team. Both goalkeepers didn’t have a lot to do. Certainly as the game wore on, we got a very good goal and looked like we could go on to win the game.”

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