Joy quickly turned to despair for Liverpool midfielder Adam Lallana during England’s draw with Spain earlier in the week after the 26-year old gave the Three Lions the lead from the penalty spot only to hobble off with an injury 20-minutes later. Now a major doubt for the trip to Southampton on Saturday, the Reds prospects of staying top of the league have taken a bit of a hit and will have the punters planning to have a flutter on the outcome taking a good long look at the promo codes at Enhanced Bets as they try to capitalize on this latest twist of fate.
“I would say 95 per cent is good news, but with Adam we don’t know yet exactly,” said Jurgen Klopp when asked about the fitness of his squad ahead of the trip to St Mary’s Stadium. “Of course, nobody comes off the pitch when they don’t feel anything and I’ve spoken to him already, he felt [something] but we couldn’t do a scan until now, so we have to wait for this,” added the German manager, doing everything but ruling him out completely. “As you can imagine, it will be close. The time until Southampton is short, so I don’t know.”
If being without Lallana wasn’t bad enough, there are also question marks hanging over the heads of Brazilian duo Philippe Coutinho and Roberto Firmino despite the Reds shelling out £30k to get them back to Merseyside from their international exploits in South America in a timely fashion. While it’s expected that both will be ready for kick-off — even though Coutinho featured heavily in wins over Peru and bitter rivals Argentina — Klopp is still playing it safe, knowing full well that travel can take it’s toll.
“I haven’t seen all of my players until now,” explained the Liverpool boss on Thursday morning. “The Brazilian guys came back last night. We tried everything to make it as comfortable as possible to bring them back, but I haven’t seen them or spoken to them because I hope they slept immediately and all that stuff,” added Klopp. “We will see.”
