Liverpool’s availability has had a huge impact in the week leading up to Saturday’s Premier League clash with Burnley. Several key players missed the game through injury and illness, with Jurgen Klopp confirming there was a flu-like illness in the Liverpool camp on Friday.
Despite taking all three points against the Clarets on Saturday, the game continued without adding a few injury concerns to their growing list. Check out the latest Burnley fitness issues. Alisson Becker and Joe Gomez were both ruled out of Saturday’s game with flu-like illnesses and both lost their battle to overcome the bug on the morning of the match.
Klopp: “We thought Joe Gomez would come back, but we had to send him home yesterday because he had a fever. “It didn’t help because Alisson wasn’t well and couldn’t sleep or eat.” The pair are expected to return to fitness for Liverpool’s next game against Brentford.
Andy Robertson, who replaced Gomes at left-back, gave an insight into how the outbreak started and said it could have originated with one of the player’s children. Robertson: “It usually starts with the kids at school, they bring it home, the adults pick it up and quickly move it to the locker room.”
Alexander-Arnold returns from injuryTrent Alexander-Arnold was surprisingly taken off at half-time during the match against Burnley, sparking speculation that the defender had picked up an injury. Those fears were confirmed by Klopp after the game, who revealed that the defender felt something in one of his knees, which has ruled him out for the past month. “It’s the same area of the knee,” the Reds manager told BBC Sport. “It’s not a bad thing, but he felt it again. We’ll have to wait and see.
“We’ll look at it. We recognized him during the game and thought ‘what can we do?’ and Trent said ‘no’. But that’s not the case, so we had to be careful when we took them.”
Ryan Gravenbirch was on the bench for Liverpool on Saturday but was given little chance to start after feeling something in the warm-up. It was decided not to put the Dutchman at risk by using him as a substitute, and Klopp confirmed after the game that his aim was to get the midfielder back to 100 per cent before his return.
“Ryan got a little emotional before the game,” he said.” They said it was fine, but you can’t play a player who feels something in the warm-up, so we have to recover quickly and hopefully we’ll be back in the next game because we need a lot of kids.”
