Caoimhin Kelleher has yet to feature in a minute of any pre-season or this campaign proper and that came from an injury that the ‘keeper picked up, following his international duties with Ireland in the summer.
Jurgen Klopp was frustrated with the decision for the Irish to say that the 23-year-old would be ‘good after holiday’ and it’s clear that this has not been the case, given that we still haven’t seen him in action or even proper training.
Speaking with the media ahead of the upcoming international fixtures, Republic of Ireland boss Stephen Kenny hit back at the German by saying (via 90min): “[Dr Alyn Byrne, team doctor] has a reputation from being involved in 200 internationals.
“They have medical notes, extensive notes, on every injury and we have no notes on Caoimhin from that camp.
“They write everything down and there’s no medical notes, so it’s interesting.
“If Caoimhin did tweak something, we weren’t aware of it. He trained with Liverpool when he went back for pre-season and got injured.
“We’re fine, we’ve got great respect for Liverpool. I’m sure it’s not an issue and we’ll all move on.”
It’s certainly some sort of disagreement between the two sets of coaches and medical departments, with both seemingly now blaming the other for how the stopper was injured.
Perhaps the easiest way to end all of this is to ask our No.62 himself and that would surely end any debate on this matter.
According to our boss, he felt something during international duty and felt it again as soon as he returned to action with the Reds – although it was also said then that he would only be out for ‘two, three weeks’ and that’s now over seven weeks ago.
It’s all a bit strange and we’ve got a lot of injuries in our ranks now, something which a lot has been made about, but also several of these are smaller injuries that have dragged on and have no real indication of a return.
Calvin Ramsay, Naby Keita and Curtis Jones all have ambiguous injuries with mystery return dates at the moment and it’s all getting a little bit strange.
Fingers crossed we can have a clean bill of health soon and all these issues and quarrels can be behind us.