Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp discussed the respective conditions of Trent Alexander-Arnold and Xherdan Shaqiri following their withdrawals from international duty.
Speaking to the club’s official website, the boss was optimistic about the young right-back’s chances of featuring against Tottenham Hotspur at the weekend.
Alexander-Arnold was forced to pull out of the England squad for their European Championships qualifying matches against the Czech Republic and Montenegro but appears to be making good progress in his recovery.
Klopp said:
Trent still feels his back. We are not 100 per cent sure, so we have to watch him. Trent wants to [be] 100 per cent, but we have to see. It is a strange one, it’s not an obvious injury that you can say something is broke or whatever, it’s just a bit annoying actually that he cannot feel really free.
For him, it was really important that he could do the rehab and not being in normal training all the time. Hopefully [between] tomorrow and Thursday he can be back in full training and then it should be fine.
The German was rather more certain about the condition of Shaqiri, however, and stated that he would be ‘fine’ for the fixture at Anfield on Sunday despite pulling out of the Switzerland squad with a groin issue.
Klopp said:
He [is] good, much better. Shaq, since a couple of weeks [ago], has had some problems with the groin.
He trained, not how he could train, but was still in the squad and all that stuff because we didn’t have a lot of options. Now he feels better day by day and should be fine for the weekend.
Liverpool will be keen to extend their lead at the top of the Premier League table this weekend when they welcome Spurs but will be well aware of the difficulties that Mauricio Pochettino’s side could pose.
