Liverpool take on Atletico Madrid in the Champions League in midweek and Alisson Becker along with midfielder Fabinho will return to the starting line up.
The South American pair missed the Watford game after they had returned late from international duty but they will be available for selection for the UCL clash.
The manager had made it clear: “As you maybe know, Atletico is not playing at the weekend – our next opponent in the Champions League. Something like that would never happen here and if it would then it would be like, ‘Oh my god, how can they do it for them?’ and stuff like this.
“So, we’ve known it for a while, we made our decision a while ago, we had to sort quarantine issues and all these kind of things, so the decision we made is the boys will not be here[vs Watford] – they will go directly to Madrid, wait there for us and then hopefully be able to play against Atletico.
“They[Alisson and Fabinho] will come back slightly later than us, 10 days [is] over then and then they can come back and are in our normal procedure again and that’s it.”
The return of Alisson and Fabinho is great news for the Reds and the pair are obviously going to be named in the starting line up. This means Kelleher will move to the bench while Henderson will leave the defensive midfielder’s role and move into a more advanced role.
But all news is not positive as the Liverpool boss has confirmed that the Atletico game will come too early for Curtis Jones who has just restarted his warm up with the first team.
Klopp said, as per the club’s official website: “Unfortunately Curtis was only with us in the warming up and will be here in Liverpool to hopefully make the final steps to full training.
“Today he did only warming up and then did his stuff, but still individual training and we decided to leave him here to continue that. And then hopefully he is ready for United.”
Harvey Elliot is also on the sidelines with an ankle injury while midfielder Thiago Alcantara’s return is still not sure as he recovers from a calf injury.
Thiago is obviously a big miss for such a huge game but the return of Fabinho will give a big sigh of relief to Jurgen Klopp. The Brazilian will provide the perfect screen to the central defenders, something which is an added convenience against a team like Atletico Madrid.
