Thiago in hospital dash
JURGEN Klopp was forced to alter his plans for yesterday’s game at Nottingham Forest when influential midfielder Thiago Alcantara needed an urgent dash to hospital after complaining of serious ear problems.
Klopp revealed that Thiago had woken up at 5.15am in agony and called for the team doctor, who informed the Liverpool manager an hour later the Spanish international needed to go to hospital for checks.
He was later driven back to Merseyside while his team-mates fell to a 1-0 defeat at the City Ground. Curtis Jones took Thiago’s place in the centre of the park for his first start of the season.
‘It wasn’t in my thoughts to have Curtis playing from the start but Thiago woke up at 5.15am with the pain of a bad ear infection,’ said Klopp.
Without their playmaker, Liverpool uncharacteristically played a 4-4-2 but Klopp felt his side should still have won their third game on the trot.
‘We had to make a lot of changes and it was not a free-flowing performance. We made wrong passes in the centre,’ he said. ‘It is a game we needed to win and we could have done by doing the right stuff. We didn’t and that is why we lost.
‘We didn’t use our moments well. We had six clear chances from set-pieces.
‘We have played three games of high intensity in six days. We have to go the full distance in midweek and Saturday again. We cannot change that but resultwise we should have showed more consistency today.’
Liverpool face Ajax in the Champions League on Wednesday and then Leeds on Saturday evening, when Klopp is likely to be banned from the touchline after accepting an FA charge of improper conduct relating to the City win last weekend.