Leicester City failed to cut the gap to Liverpool at the top of the Premier League table as they battled to a 1-1 draw with Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park.

A brilliant volley by Wilfried Zaha at the near post put the South London club ahead, after which Harvey Barnes slotted a fine equalizer with his left foot in the bottom right hand corner to salvage a draw.

The Foxes boss, Brendan Rodgers shared his thoughts after the disappointing but entertaining draw.

  • On his sides’ performance

After a hard-earned draw against Manchester United, Leicester were looking to pick up three points in London. However, they managed yet another hard-fought stalemate against Crystal Palace.

Rodgers rested several first team members including Jamie Vardy and Youri Tielemans - a decision that naturally affected the score line at the end.  

When asked about the outcome and if he was happy with it, Rodgers said on Amazon Prime TV: “No, we should’ve won the game. I think we had good control of the first half. We obviously had the penalty and a couple of other chances we should have put away.

“In the second half, we made mistakes and gave away the ball for their first goal. But I thought our reaction was very good. The way we picked up the tempo of the game. Apart from the first fifteen-twenty minutes of the second half, we had good control of the game and that’s a game you have to win.”

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  • On Kelechi Iheanacho’s missed penalty

The Foxes squandered a number of opportunities to draw first blood in the first-half, including a miss from the penalty spot from Iheanacho. The Nigerian struck poorly without conviction from 12 yards as Palace keeper Guaita made a fine effort to save it.

Rodgers said: “I said at half time: you got to let that go. Kel practiced five penalties yesterday and five out of five, great penalties on the training pitch. So, I thought he was confident going in to take it and again it’s just one of those things. The courage to take it is always important.”

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  • On Harvey Barnes’ performance

The winger has been in fine form for the Foxes and managed to score for the second time in two games. The Burnley born number 15 has now scored two extremely important goals that keep the Foxes in the Premier League top four going into 2021.

"I thought he was outstanding. You know to play a second 90 minutes (in the space of two days) and having done so well in the match against United on Saturday. To play with that level of fitness, he was outstanding – getting us that penalty in the first half as well. He’s such a threat," Rodgers said. 

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  • On the December 2020 fixtures

The Foxes end 2020 with four victories, two draws and two losses, across two competitions – the Premier League & Europa League.

Rodgers said: “We had two tough games (at the end), Manchester United and Crystal Palace of course, on the back of not very good results. We knew coming into this game that on their day they can be very good. I still think with the changes that we made, we dominated the game. Really pleased with the mentality at the end, to keep fighting, a point that could be very very important to us at the end.”

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