LFC fitness update: Szoboszlai, Thiago, Bajcetic and Bradley
Dominik Szoboszlai is in contention to feature against Leicester City on Sunday, confirmed Jürgen Klopp.
The summer signing missed Liverpool’s second pre-season fixture, against Greuther Furth earlier this week, due to a minor ankle injury.
But the No.8 has now returned to training with the squad in Singapore and is set to get more minutes when the Reds face Leicester in a 10am BST kick-off at the National Stadium.
“Yeah, Dom is back, will train tonight and if nothing happens here he will play tomorrow night yes, definitely,” Klopp told a pre-match press conference on Saturday.
“It’s good, it was nothing too serious. In these moments we had really a lot of intense sessions and it was in one moment where he just rolled his ankle a little bit. We all know everything can happen there but nothing really happened apart from he needed a few days’ rest, proper treatment and is already back running pretty quickly after.
“So, he was now yesterday in training but yesterday training was obviously not intense; after the long trip we had to just shake the legs a little bit, play a rondo and the players were shooting a little bit after the session, that’s all.
“Tonight will be a proper session and then the game tomorrow. In the moment nothing speaks against that he will play, yeah.”
Thiago Alcantara, Stefan Bajcetic and Conor Bradley were three players not included in Liverpool’s 27-man squad for the trip to south-east Asia.
Asked about Bajcetic’s progress specifically, Klopp responded: “Stefan is in the last steps back into team training.
“We left him and Thiago at home because the travel would cost him back and forth like two, three, maybe four days of training and we thought it makes no sense in a very important phase of his rehab for both of the boys.
“But I’m in constant contact, so he will be back in team training, that’s the plan in the moment, when we arrive home. That’s good.
“Yeah, super-talented player, a really cool package. Unfortunately we didn’t see him playing for a while because it was a really nasty, not a bad injury but for a young player an annoying one where you feel pretty quickly fit again but still not allowed to do a lot and then you have to wait and wait and wait, and then from a specific moment on you can go – and that’s where we are now.
“Yeah, played for us six, played for us eight, scored goals for us. In a really young age showed a lot of tactical discipline, is footballing-wise really good, good overview, good passing, a lot of good things.
“But, again, still very young and we have to make sure that we use him in the right way and the right moments. And we have to increase the time step by step we can use him actually and that’s what we try.”
The manager added of a knock sustained by Bradley to rule him out of the tour: “With Conor it is a real shame, to be honest. Conor did really well. But things like this happen.”