Assistant manager Chris Davies believes Leicester’s Carabao Cup win at Burton shows how much they trust their squad.
The Foxes made nine changes for the fourth-round tie with just Jonny Evans and Youri Tielemans remaining from the side that started the 9-0 demolition of Southampton in the Premier League on Friday night.
Kelechi Iheanacho marked his first start of the season with the opening goal before Tielemans gave Leicester a two-goal cushion at half-time.
Liam Boyce pulled a goal back just after the break for Burton and Brendan Rodgers’ team were put under some intense pressure in the second half but survived several difficult spells and sealed a place in the quarter-finals when substitute James Maddison struck in the final minute to seal a 3-1 win.
Davies said: “Full credit to Burton for their performance. I thought they brought a lot of energy and intensity into the game, and quality at times.
“But you saw the strength of the squad tonight and the performance was good. We did it at Luton in the previous round, we changed it for that game as well.
“We’ve not done it just to give them a bit of game-time, we’ve done it because we trust them. We know they’ve got the quality to deliver the performance and the result for us.
“You could go through the players that have come in and they’ve all performed well. Some are lacking the physical condition to last 90 minutes, but we had a bench for that.
“It’s really good to be able to rotate the players but it’s only because we trust them.”
The 3-1 win saw Leicester advance to the quarter-finals of the competition for the third successive year.
Davies added: “We’re into the quarter-finals again and we’ll be looking forward to that game when it comes around.
“There’s a lot of belief at the moment and the confidence is really high. We’ll be full of confidence when that quarter-final does come around but for us it’s now time to turn our attentions to Crystal Palace at the weekend.”
There was to be no repeat of Burton’s fairytale run to the semi-finals this season. The League One side claimed famous victories against Aston Villa, Burnley, Nottingham Forest and Middlesbrough en route to the last four of the competition during the 2018/19 campaign, but they were unable to pull off another giant-killing on Tuesday night.
Burton boss Nigel Clough, who added Bournemouth to the Brewers’ growing list of scalps in the previous round, was still proud of his team though.
“We think their starting 11 was worth £100 million out there tonight so it’s very difficult when you have that quality against you and you give them a goal in the first few minutes,” said Clough.
“But in the second half we gave them a game and we caused them problems. We got a goal back and had a real go at them.
“We are very proud of the effort we put in and we are disappointed to lose. We were in the game until the 88th minute but the third goal has gone in and killed it.”
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