Football video - Brendan Rodgers: We started so poorly I thought we were social distancing

ByAlexander Netherton

Updated 16/01/2021 at 23:55 GMT

Brendan Rodgers was pleased with his Leicester City side's efforts in their 2-0 win over Southampton in the Premier League on Saturday night. He also praised James Maddison for his unusual celebrations following a request from the league to enforce social distancing when players celebrate their goals.

Leicester City boss Brendan Rodgers praised his side's improved performance as they beat Southampton 2-0 on Saturday night, and was happy with James Maddison's unusual celebration.

Rodgers told BT Sport: "A great win for us. The first 25 minutes I thought we were socially distancing, we didn't get within two metres of them.

"We were too passive, not aggressive enough which wasn't like us. But then we started to press the game better and it allowed us to sustain attacks more.

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"Second half we were much better and should have scored more than two goals. At the same time we defended well."

On James Maddison's celebration: "[We're] trying to treat it as a positive by saying we can be creative. Instead of seeing it as a negative saying you can't celebrate - you can, just in a different way.

"Football brings such great joy to people. It's such a really, really hard time - off the back of Christmas. January is always a tough month for people. If they can get some sort of relief from a good competitive game and seeing players celebrating in the right way that's important."

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Southampton boss Ralph Hasenhuttl struck a negtative note given his side's injury problems, saying: "It's never nice to lose a game but we had chances. We hit the bar, we fought with everything we have.

"We are definitely a team that is never giving up. The quality of the opponent was better than ours today.

"The first goal, you don't shoot at goal like that every day, it was fantastic from Maddison. We had good chances but we couldn't finish and that was the difference.

"It doesn't look good at the moment, we have a lot of injuries and not many alternatives. The good news is we have 29 points and they don't take them away from us."

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