Liverpool have had their fair share of injury problems this season and Jurgen Klopp wasn’t given any restpite from having to provide fitness updates, even ahead of our final game of the campaign.
Speaking with the media before facing Southampton, the boss was asked for an update on Stefan Bajcetic and said: “Yeah, there’s progress. I spoke yesterday [with him] along with the doc. There will be – around [the] start of pre-season – there will be parts of reintegration, but that will take time.
“So, he’s not in full training. That’s the prediction at the moment. He’s completely pain-free, but we talk about a very young player and a very young body, so we have to be careful.
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“It’s a different injury, obviously, but we had to be super-careful with Curtis [Jones]. It’s annoying for the player, really annoying, because you can train two days and then you need two days off, but you feel great, but it’s just [so you] don’t take any risk.
“That might be a little bit the plan for him, [but] when that exactly starts, I don’t know. I hope that he can come with us in the training camp and can do these bits and from then on progress. Then he should be fine for the start of the season, but it’s how it is with these kind of injuries.
“There’s no real timeline that you say after six weeks, or whatever, the ligament is healed and now from there we can go. We don’t know that. You have to wait always for the next assessment and if you know that then you can go from there.
“But it’s positive, I think at the end of the pre-season he will be hopefully a week or two already in full training and before that parts of training. So, that should be fine.”
With the 18-year-old being ruled out for the rest of the season back in March, we all knew a long road to recovery was ahead but to hear the German sounding positive is great and now let’s hope he can kick on in the new campaign.
The 55-year-old said in the past that he was a ‘really good’ member of his squad and we’re all excited to see what the teenager can go on to achieve at Anfield.
The Spanish-born starlet may well prove to be the defensive midfield cover that the Reds may have been looking to sign this summer and if he can continue his fine form that we saw in glimpses this year – then we might just have a superstar on our hands.
You can watch Klopp’s Bajcetic update (from 5:10) via BeanymanSports on YouTube:
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