“Unscathed and Unstoppable: Klopp’s Liverpool Faces Man Utd After Intense Europa League Clash!”
Jurgen Klopp gives Liverpool injury update ahead of Man Utd after fresh injury fear.
Jurgen Klopp revealed that his Liverpool squad came out of their Europa League loss to Royal Union Saint-Gilloise unscathed as they turn their attention to Manchester United.
The Reds were defeated 2-1 by the Belgian side, having already topped Group E and moved into the knockout stage before kick-off. As a result, Klopp fielded the youngster European team in the club’s history aged 21.9 years old.
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Jarell Quansah bagged his first goal for the club when equalising in the first half. But Liverpool were second-best for much of the encounter, although Klopp had been afforded the luxury of leaving Virgil van Dijk, Mo Salah, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Alisson Becker on Merseyside.
The Premier League leaders now prepare to welcome bitter rivals United to Anfield on Sunday (16.30 GMT). And Klopp is delighted that no new injuries were sustained against Union following a ‘pretty intense’ game.
The Liverpool manager said: “I think we definitely all saw the same game, so for us it was a deserved win for Union. Even though I heard now the first goal might have been offside but nobody can tell properly. We will see that, but who cares? They are well set up, they are top of the table, they played a stronger side, I mixed up the team completely, so I think the changes we made, the amount of changes, were too much for rhythm. We needed to grow into the game. I am really happy that happened in the second half more and more and that we gave it a game, a proper game in the end. Before that, they gave us possession, won the balls on counter-attack and it was really tricky, to be honest.
“It was pretty intense on a really difficult pitch. It was not great and you saw how intense it was, a couple of players had cramps for Union. So, in the end we could have scored the equaliser and it would have been nice, we would have loved to have got the point here. For some it was a really important experience and for others good for rhythm. I saw good performances and, of course, as a team it is not a fair assessment if I say now they are top of the table in Belgium and we come here, bring kids – altogether that’s really difficult. But I thought we gave it a go and that’s OK for me. Nobody got hurt, nobody is injured, so we recover, go home and go again.”
Ibrahima Konate came off at half-time against Union and was replaced by Joe Gomez. However, that was not down to injury and Liverpool planned that change before the game – along with withdrawing Wataru Endo for Ryan Gravenberch at the interval. Klopp added: “We just wanted to share the intensity. Do I want to play Joe Gomez 90 or Ibou 90 if we had the chance to do that? [I decided] 45 and 45, the same in midfield. These changes were planned before the game, independent of the result. We just tried to give it a go. It was clear that Jarell if he could play through then he would play through. That was the thinking behind it.”
Alexis Mac Allister (knee), Andy Robertson (shoulder), Diogo Jota (muscle), Thiago Alcantara (hip), Stefan Bajcetic (calf) and Joel Matip (ACL) will all be absent for Liverpool.
