If ever there was a time for Liverpool’s frontline department to continue its even spread of goal contributions then this might be it.
Saturday’s 4-1 win against Brentford might have taken them temporarily five points clear, while being enough to keep four between them and Manchester City after their 1-1 draw with Chelsea later that day, but it came at quite the cost to Jurgen Klopp.
Curtis Jones was the first to succumb to injury, being forced off with a suspected ankle issue before the in-form Diogo Jota suffered the most serious setback of a bruising encounter at the Gtech Stadium.
The Portugal international left the pitch on a stretcher and the stadium itself in a knee brace and crutches after Brentford midfielder Christian Norgaard had landed awkwardly on him in the first half.
It brought a crashing halt to the sort of performances that have seen Jota score six times and create four assists since his most recent return from injury on Boxing Day at Burnley.
The player himself is still convinced he can play a part in the end-of-season run-in and desperately wants to feature for Portugal at this summer’s European Championships after missing the 2022 World Cup through injury – but a lot will depend on further assessments that were undertaken at the club’s AXA Training Centre on Monday.
Klopp will deliver the latest in his Tuesday afternoon press conference but the No.20 will miss out on Sunday’s Carabao Cup final with Chelsea and is looking at around two months on the sidelines going by the early indications.
Darwin Nunez, whose impudent chip over Mark Flekken to open the scoring on Saturday was his sixth goal since Boxing Day, was also taken off as a precaution with Klopp being vague on the details in the aftermath of the convincing victory over Thomas Frank’s side.
“Darwin, we took off because he said he feels something a little,” Klopp said. “Today that was enough to immediately push the brake and that’s what we did. We took him off, brought on Cody (Gakpo) and that worked really well. That’s not great. We can talk about that part of the game, that’s really not good but we cannot change that anymore.”
Salah, typically, has the lion’s share of that tally with 19, with Jota’s 14 just one ahead of Nunez, while Gakpo is now up to 10, just ahead of Diaz, whose header against Burnley earlier this month was his ninth.
After 38 fixtures, it’s the earliest point of the campaign that four players have scored at least 10 for Liverpool since 1981 when Terry McDermott, Graeme Souness, Kenny Dalglish and David Johnson all reached the milestone in 31 and with Diaz a man in form presently, it would take a brave man betting against the Colombian bettering that 43-year-old record sooner rather than later.
And with fingers crossed over the fitness of three of those front three ahead of a vitally important week, the carve up of goals between those tasked with scoring them at least offers hope that there is no overreliance on any one player up top.
