Struggling Salah makes it TEN Klopp crocks!
Mo suffers another scare ahead of Carabao Cup final
MOHAMED Salah is Liverpool’s latest injury scare as Jurgen Klopp faces being without 10 senior players for tonight’s Premier League clash with Luton, just days before the Carabao Cup final.
Salah, who returned at Brentford on Saturday following a hamstring problem, is being assessed after feeling discomfort which the club hope is just a reaction to his month-long lay-off
‘It is day by day with Mo,’ confirmed Klopp. ‘It’s a similar area where he feels it a little bit. We have to see how it develops. It’s nothing crazy, we have to see.’
Salah has rarely been injured in seven years on Merseyside but flew back for treatment from the Africa Cup of Nations after pulling up for Egypt against Ghana on January 18.
He returned to the bench at Brentford but had to come on earlier than anticipated when Diogo Jota was carried off on a stretcher after 44 minutes. The Premier League leaders are down to the bare bones in midfield and attack with Jota, Dominik Szoboszlai and Curtis Jones ruled out for Luton’s visit and Darwin Nunez a doubt after coming off at half-time in the Brentford game with a muscle issue.
Trent Alexander-Arnold, Alisson and Thiago Alcantara are also on the treatment table alongside long-term casualties Joel Matip and Stefan Bajcetic. Klopp said Jota faces ‘months’ out but his knee injury is expected to be on the lower end of that scale and he could return by the end of April.
‘Our injury situation is definitely not great,’ reflected Klopp. ‘Alisson is a muscle injury, we don’t know exactly how long it takes. Trent and Dom are on the way back but not in training yet. With Diogo it will obviously take months.’
However, the Reds boss doesn’t want injuries to be cited as an obstacle to their chances of winning trophies and pointed to the versatility of Alexis Mac Allister and Joe Gomez as an example of how to overcome problems.
‘It’s no excuse,’ he added. ‘There are 5,000 ways to play a football game and we have just to find one. Footballers nowadays can play different positions. A defender has to attack and an attacker has to defend. All our boys are good on the ball and have to be good off the ball.
‘You become the best version of yourself and then who cares about the position.’
Luis Diaz, who scored Liverpool’s last-minute equaliser at Luton in November, is available tonight with Klopp hoping his recent return to form continues.
‘All the players who are fit are incredibly important for us,’ he said. ‘Lucho (Diaz) is in a really good moment.’
Of the sidelined players, Nunez has the best chance of facing Chelsea in Sunday’s Carabao Cup final but Klopp says the Wembley showpiece won’t come into his thinking for Luton.
‘Pretty much every game in the Premier League is a final as well,’ he said. ‘If he (Nunez) was fully fit, there is no reason to keep him out and no chance we’d do it. He felt (his muscle) in the Brentford game. We go day by day and see.’