Jurgen Klopp concedes he has a defensive “puzzle” to solve as Liverpool’s injuries begin to pile up with just 11 days until the Premier League opener.
While most of the headlines surrounding Liverpool at the moment concern a possible move to Barcelona for Philippe Coutinho, Klopp’s principal concern is his beat up defense ahead of the trip to Watford on August 12.
Nathaniel Clyne, James Milner and Dejan Lovren all suffering with knocks, and now defender Joe Gomez will miss the Reds’ pre-season Audi Cup fixtures this coming week as a pre-caution after sustaining a knee injury in training.
It’s not a big injury [for Joe Gomez], he just sprained it a little bit,” Klopp said.
“Not everyone has had their [full] preparations yet so we still have a few problems there, but so far everything is looking good.
“It’s quite a challenge to see what we can do with these players, it’s a little bit of a puzzle, but we will do our best.
“We’re going to train at 5pm today again and then, after that, I will know who’s available.”
With Gomez’s fresh injury issues, Nathaniel Clyne having only featured for 45 minutes during the Reds’ pre-season fixtures so far and Jon Flanagan seemingly out of favour with the manager, Trent Alexander-Arnold’s chances of starting the season at right-back only seem to be getting stronger by the day.
Liverpool are in Germany for the Audi Cup and take on Bayern Munich on Tuesday before a second game against either Napoli or Atletico Madrid in the final or third-place play-off.