Brendan Rodgers is ready to fight to keep Ben Chilwell at Leicester after finally getting to work with him.
Defending champions Manchester City are reportedly ready to make a move for the 22-year-old England international in the summer.
Rodgers tried to sign Chilwell for Liverpool when he was at Anfield and he has now become Leicester’s first-choice left-back.
With just Christian Fuchs, who is out of contract, as cover the Foxes are lacking at left-back and manager Rodgers wants to keep Chilwell.
“I’m just in the door and I can see he’s a huge talent, I tried to take him to Liverpool when I was there,” Rodgers said, ahead of Saturday’s Premier League trip to Burnley.
“So I know how good he is, he wasn’t in the first team though. But I’m pretty relaxed about it.
“He’s a wonderful young player, he’s still got a lot to learn in his game.
“He really enjoys being here, we’ll see how it pans out but he’s certainly one we don’t want to lose.
“We’ll assess it as we go along.”
Leicester snubbed Liverpool’s interest again in 2016 and issued a hands off warning to Rodgers’ replacement Jurgen Klopp.
Chilwell had not made a Premier League appearance when Rodgers was interested but he quickly realised the young defender would not leave the King Power Stadium.
“The club were keen to keep him here, he was a boy that was recognised as a talent at the time,” he said.
“We were looking for a left-back and he was right at the top of the list.
“We didn’t get to the ‘nearly there’. Leicester were obviously going to protect their assets.”
“There you go. Leicester would have been delighted. It was important.”
Leicester are 10th in the Premier League after a first win under Rodgers last week, a 3-1 victory over Fulham.
Burnley are just two points above the relegation zone after three straight defeats but Rodgers has belief in opposite number Sean Dyche.
He added: “Sean’s done an outstanding job there. He got them back there. Last year they had really good success and they qualified for Euro football and my experience of that is that it’s very difficult.
“You come back in June, if you don’t qualify it can start your season off on a real downer. He’s been able to galvanise the squad. It shows his qualities as a coach. We expect a tough game.”
‘Arteta, Alonso, Emery, me… none of us were physical players – we needed the understanding of the game. That probably helped us move into management’: Premier League boss reveals reasons for natural career progression
‘England have the players to win the World Cup – it’ll be tough for Thomas Tuchel to do a bad job, with the squad he has at his disposal’ Former Three Lions winger backs new boss after gentle qualifying draw
