It is alarming how quickly the tide can turn. Rarely in football does the status quo remain unchanged for long, and so it is proving for Liverpool as their injury concerns steadily begin to mount.
It was not so long ago that debate raged over how Arne Slot should divide minutes between his forward line to ensure no one was left aggrieved by a lack of game time. Now it is a question of which of the Reds’ attackers are in a position to go again ahead of a punishing run of four fixtures in the space of just 11 days.
The Liverpool boss confirmed on Tuesday that first-choice striker Diogo Jota is set to be sidelined until after the November international break following that rib injury he sustained in the 2-1 win over Chelsea earlier this month. Harvey Elliott is still out with a fractured foot, while summer signing Federico Chiesa is not yet free of the fitness issues which have plagued him since he joined the Reds in an initial £10million deal from Juventus back in August.
“We have six forwards and only have four left,” Slot said on Tuesday, before quipping: “Maybe we should bring Ben Doak back!”
The Dutchman was, of course, joking about recalling the young Scot from what has so far been a promising spell on loan with Championship side Middlesbrough. However, one more injury in an offensive area for Liverpool and Slot might be left seriously ruing the decision to sanction Doak’s season-long sojourn away from Anfield.
While Liverpool started the campaign with what is arguably one of the most well-stocked and potent front lines in world football, it is hard to argue that injuries to the Reds’ two current attacking absentees have come as a surprise. Jota, when fit, is irrefutably the club’s most lethal finisher but a succession of knocks and niggles have thus far prevented him from fully assuming the role of Liverpool’s star man since he arrived on Merseyside from Wolverhampton Wanderers in September 2020.
In his four full seasons with the Reds, the Portuguese has only once (in 2021/22) played upwards of 30 Premier League games. His next best campaign in terms of top-flight appearances was in 2022/23, when he featured 22 times.
His latest injury, picked up in a collision with Chelsea’s Tosin Adarabioyo, was admittedly impossible to legislate for. But, as a player who has never been reluctant to dive into a challenge, those contact injuries are almost expected, and history dictates that the forward is always likely to spend a significant portion of the season on sidelines.
Chiesa, too, had his fair share of fitness issues during his time in Italy. According to Transfermarkt, the 27-year-old has missed 100 games for club and country over the past six seasons, spending 493 days out in total.
The most serious of those injuries was an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) rupture in January 2022, but – before his move to Liverpool – he had also been ruled out with 21 other separate complaints over the course of his senior career.
That is not to say Liverpool were wrong to gamble on the forward in the summer. The Italian presented as the “opportunistic” kind of signing sporting director Richard Hughes admitted would shape the club’s transfer strategy, and getting the chance to land one of the hottest names in Italian football for a relatively nominal fee seemed at the time like a no-brainer.
It was a low-risk/high-reward gamble that may still pay off in the months and years ahead but, having been deemed surplus to requirements at Juventus in the summer, it would have been naive for Liverpool to expect him to make a significant impact right away.
“He missed pre-season (with us) and in pre-season (with Juventus) he was on low intensity sessions as he had to train with three or four players separate from the group,” Slot said on Tuesday.
“Going from then to a high-intensity league, to a high-intensity playing style is difficult in general for every player, but especially if you had a pre-season like this. We knew this before and we knew we had to be really careful to adjust where we could to his individual needs.
“But it hasn’t been perfect yet so we are trying to find the right way of building him up without overloading him. That has been difficult up until now. I have full confidence that will happen. Let’s let him first be fit.”
Liverpool, then, were fully aware that Chiesa would take time to adapt to the Premier League and therefore should perhaps have considered a contingency plan if the Italian’s integration into English football was not entirely seamless. In the summer, the decision to send Doak and fellow forward Lewis Koumas (now at Stoke City) out on loan seemed to make total sense.
Aged 18 and 19 respectively, the duo are at a crucial stage of their development and could benefit hugely from regular first-team football. They would not have been guaranteed that at Anfield, though their absence will be keenly felt in Wednesday night’s Carabao Cup tie, when Slot will surely have to field a far stronger line up than he would have liked against Brighton & Hove Albion at the Amex.
“In certain situations you’d prefer to keep (young players) here as you can implement your playing style, but if that means they hardly play then it means they can’t progess as you hope for,” the Liverpool boss said ahead of that game.
“That is the balance. (Stefan) Bajcetic is a good example of that, you hope to see he plays a lot and has already played a few games. It’s good that he went to a good manager in Pep Lijnders, same with Ben Doak.”
In the long-term, Liverpool’s decision to allow their young charges to spread their wings away from Anfield could prove a masterstroke. Koumas’ stunning goal for Stoke against Bristol City last week and Doak’s steady assimilation into the Scotland national team is evidence enough of that.
But, for now, Liverpool’s senior quartet of Mohamed Salah, Darwin Nunez, Cody Gakpo and Luis Diaz will have to pick up the slack while they wait for the cavalry to return. The Reds can ill-afford for any of the aforementioned crop to be consigned to the treatment table, or else their current injury quandary risks descending into a full-blown crisis.
