Drinkwater to miss season opener through ‘injury’ as long-term Chelsea interest revealed

The Danny Drinkwater rumors may be rather uninspiring* but it’s the best we got so let’s see if anything interesting happened there on Friday.

With a week to go before their season opener against Arsenal next Friday, Leicester City played Borussia Mönchengladbach in a friendly, winning 2-1 thanks to second-half Jamie Vardy brace. (Thorgan Hazard scored for the visitors.) But the most intriguing part was that Danny Drinkwater was nowhere to be seen (well okay, he was in the stands), with Foxes boss Craig Shakespeare revealing afterwards that the midfielder was suffering (suffering!) from a minor thigh knock. Surely, Shakey’s been around the game long enough to know that you’re supposed to claim a back injury when making up these things, not a thigh injury!

“He pulled his thigh in Wednesday in training. I’m sure how long (he’ll be out for) but we’re expecting 10 to 12 days, so that rules him out of Arsenal. It was unfortunate because it was right at the end of training. We’ll get him assessed again.”

-Craig Shakespeare; source: Leicester Mercury

Matty James played alongside Wilfred Ndidi in Drinkwater’s absence and provided an assist for Vardy. A sign of things to come for them, or are we to believe Drinkwater’s injury is really the only issue at hand here?

The Mirror certainly aren’t believing that explanation — they wouldn’t be the Mirror if they did — doubling down on the Chelsea rumors for the 27-year-old. They are claiming that Chelsea have in fact been interest since last year, but didn’t want to jeopardize the Kanté transfer by pushing for Drinkwater as well. News to me, but in a strange way, it does make me feel a bit better about the prospect of this move.

Oh, and of course they’re claiming that ol’ Danny boy wants to move and is “ready to tell” Leicester about it. It’s a good thing he told the Mirror first, right?

*P.S.: In a way, what’s sure to be a massive fee aside, Drinkwater is classic Abramovich era Chels. He would join a rather sizable group of uninspiring midfield signings, some of whom ended up contributing greatly, despite initial impressions, some of whom less so: Geremi, Smertin, Parker, Tiago, Járošík, Lass, Maniche, Sidwell, Mineiro, Romeu, MRLSH — almost all of whom ended up winning a trophy or two, which does make me laugh.