The latest from Klopp on Van Dijk’s injury…

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Virgil van Dijk is a doubt for the weekend’s game at Stamford Bridge, Jurgen Klopp has confirmed.

In his pre-match press conference to preview the match against Chelsea on Saturday evening, Klopp said that the Dutch colossus has not trained with the first team all week, meaning it is highly unlikely we will see him feature.

He was taken off during the win over Southampton with a rib injury sustained against PSG.

According to the Daily Mail, Klopp told reporters: “If Virgil is fit and can play, then he will play. If not, then obviously we have options and that’s really good. For that, yes, his impact is always obvious.

“But we could play football before Virgil van Dijk and we can play football without Virgil van Dijk, thank God. I prefer he is fit and available and I can make decisions about whether he needs a rest in one of the other games. We will see what it will be tomorrow.

“Virgil is a world-class player, there’s no doubt about that. If you miss a world class player, it’s always not cool.”

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Klopp finished by reassuring us that even if Van Dijk cannot feature, there are able replacements in reserve, including Joe Gomez who has been outstanding since making the move to centre-back permanent.

Klopp said: “Dejan Lovren played his first game after around about 10 weeks out. Most of that time he was that injured that he couldn’t even think about training. It was a part of the body where you can’t do fitness, nothing. After that long period out, he played an outstanding game.

“Joel Matip – a long time injured – but now two games in a row played fantastic. We all get judged constantly and for the boys, it’s much more important what I think than what you think.

“I can imagine there are people saying “thank God the others are coming back” but these boys did a really good job.”

This game at the weekend is far more important than the Carabao Cup tie – whoever is selected in defence will need to keep better tabs on Eden Hazard.

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