You know the football’s back when there’s more injury updates and Jurgen Klopp has provided his first one of the new season.
Speaking with the club’s website ahead of the pre-season game against Manchester United, the 55-year-old said: “The plan for United is to use all of our players, except a couple maybe. We will see, but we know one of them is Diogo [Jota] because of a little issue he has from earlier in the summer.
“It’s nothing serious but we decided not to take the risk with him for this game, especially as it’s only our first game of the pre-season”.
The Portuguese forward had said that he felt like was at ‘100 percent’ on his return to action with the Reds but this clearly wasn’t enough to convince the boss that he should play.
Given that it is the opening game of this summer, there is absolutely no reason why we should risk Diogo Jota and there’s another game this week against Crystal Palace for him to focus on anyway.
With plenty of senior and academy players to use as well, this will provide an opportunity for another attacking player to have more minutes on the pitch.
There will be plenty of attention on the likes of Darwin Nunez and Fabio Carvalho too, who the boss has also confirmed will feature in the match.
Let’s hope every else gets through unscathed and that we can enjoy our first game since facing Real Madrid in Paris, 45 days ago.
Only a pre-season friendly and the first at that, but the defending has been beyond comical. It’s not rustiness but basic crap defending. I doubt though that we will see the young full backs, Phillips and Jones playing much next season, although Gomez could struggle for games too.