New injury puts Lallana in fear of World Cup spot
ADAM LALLANA’S dream of going to the World Cup is in the balance after he suffered a serious hamstring injury at Selhurst Park.
The Liverpool midfielder came on as a 65th-minute substitute in the 2-1 win at Crystal Palace but was forced off the pitch four minutes later after he fell awkwardly and immediately grabbed his left leg. A stretcher was sent on but he was able to walk gingerly back to the dressing room.
He emerged an hour later on crutches and will undergo a scan in the next 48 hours to assess the damage. Jurgen Klopp did not believe it was fair to go into detail but the England international is understood to be inconsolable.
‘I’ve seen him and it is not good,’ said Klopp. ‘From the first moment I saw him go down it looked serious. It looks like something with the muscle, we can’t make any further assessments so far.
‘He’s our mate, our boy, our player. He’s having a difficult season already, and maybe one of the biggest achievements of this team is that they could play a season like they have played so far without Adam Lallana.’
Lallana missed the first half of the season after he ruptured his left thigh and there have been other niggling issues. Klopp added: ‘To see him come back step by step and then suffer again, it is a big, big blow for us.’
The injury put a black mark on what was a significant day for Liverpool, as they came from behind to win and consolidate their position in the top four. They were, though, fortunate not to see Sadio Mane receive a red card.
Mane, who scored Liverpool’s equaliser, was booked for diving after a tussle with James McArthur.
He then deliberately handled the ball in the second half. ‘It was no dive,’ said the Reds boss of the first incident. ‘Diving is without contact. There was contact, 100 per cent. The player wants to carry on, and then you see you can’t, so you go down.
‘We cannot say it was a penalty, but it was not a dive.
‘The second yellow? I think it was a foul on Sadio but he made the wrong decision to put the hand on the ball. I thought he was gone. We were lucky in that moment, but that should have been his first card of the game.’