Naby Keita will not feature in the match-day squad on Sunday as Liverpool take on Manchester United at Anfield.
The Guinean has been out for a month, pretty much, with an obscure injury the club hasn’t discussed very publicly.
Today, during his press-conference, Jurgen Klopp confirmed that Keita will be out for this weekend, and perhaps even a little longer – which will surely be met with collective groans from Reds everywhere.
“Naby is not ready for involvement,” the Reds boss said. “It’s not a big thing; it’s a little bit like with other players in the past when they came back from injuries and then because of the amount of games and situation in the squad they had to play.
“Then a little injury happened again. Now we just had to put on the brake and say ‘let’s settle it properly
“In the moment we have alternatives in midfield, so we really try to give him all the time he needs to get 100% fit.
“That’s the situation, so no, he is not in contention for Sunday.”
Thankfully, we’ll have Thiago starting in midfield, which at least provides us a creative spark centrally that can go missing when Keita isn’t in the side.
Naby can dribble through the centre and also play clever one-twos, which we rarely see from Gini Wijnaldum and Jordan Henderson.
With those two either side of Thiago though, we think the balance of the team looks exceptional, and we only hope Joel Matip can start at centre-back.