Injury woes may send Liverpool’s Klopp on shopping spree

Liverpool head coach Jurgen Klopp has acknowledged his emotions were bitter-sweet in the aftermath of 1-0 Capital One Cup semi-final first-leg victory over Stoke City on Tuesday night – a game in which three of his footballers sustained injuries.

Coutinho seemed to pull his hamstring only 18 minutes into the fixture, with Lovren following his teammate off the pitch in the 34 minute with what looked like a similar issue.

Midfielder Lucas was deployed as an emergency centre-back alongside Toure after Lovren’s withdrawal, but the Ivorian confounded Liverpool’s injury woes when he appeared to be struggling at full-time with what also looked like a hamstring injury.

And Klopp will have to travel to Exeter for tomorrow’s FA Cup third-round tie desperately short of senior centre-backs after ruling Kolo Toure out of the match with the cramp he suffered late on at Stoke.

“I have made only one league start this season and I want to play more, I think that is obvious for any player in that situation”.

The duo join the long list of injured defenders at the club, with Martin Skrtel, Mamadou Sakho and Joe Gomez already on the sidelines.

Klopp suggested that his team was having problems in terms of carving out opportunities as well as finishing them off. We have to find a solution to the current situation. “I don’t know how serious and we have to wait for this”. I have to make the right decision for Liverpool and for my team.

“I think people have been a bit slow to give Stoke credit the last couple of years, I think people still associate them with the team they used to be but they’ve got some really good players”.

“Jurgen Klopp came in after 11 games and the players, certainly the players who were playing, would have had good fitness”, Souness said.

“We have no break, no chance to recover, but we couldn’t wave the white flag”.

“It’s disappointing to be leaving because I’ve enjoyed it so much at Coventry, but I’m also looking forward to the next step in my career”, Kent, said as quoted by the Western Morning News. “That’s what we tell them and we will see”.

But the Reds boss explained that “in this part of the season” and “after the last game” it is “always easy to criticise things” and say “we have to make this better or make that better”.