When Joe Gomez picked up his injury at the beginning of December v Burnley, we were initially told the young Englishman would be absent for six weeks.
This was pretty devastating at the time considering the excellent form he was in, but thankfully, the team managed to win its games through the month without him.
Despite Joel Matip and Dejan Lovren both picking up problems of their own, and Fabinho playing in central defence on two occasions, the only result of importance that hasn’t gone our way in Gomez’s absence was at the Etihad.
Many would suggest the outcome against our title rivals Manchester City would have been different if Gomez and not Lovren had been on the field alongside Virgil van Dijk, of course.
Gomez’s original six-week return date has been and gone, and now Jurgen Klopp has sadly told supporters that the injury is worse and more complicated than originally thought.
“We have to wait. Obviously it was really unlucky in that situation,” he told the official website. “The injury is not like Trent or Gini where you know ‘that’s the only thing’. It could have been like that, but then more and more we found out it’s a more serious thing.
“We have to wait, for sure, a couple of weeks. We will see, it is difficult to judge in the moment.
“We thought three weeks ago he would be closer and then we had to make another diagnosis in which we saw that it didn’t work out so far as we wanted, that’s why he is still not in training or running on the pitch.”
For us, it doesn’t sound like Gomez is even close to a return if he’s not on the training pitch regaining proper fitness.
We reckon we can write off most of Februarys fixtures, although on the 19th we face Bayern Munich without suspended van Dijk – so it’d be nice if he was ready for that one!