Liverpool will be patient with Sturridge, says Klopp

Before Liverpool’s Europa League game against Bordeaux on Thursday, manager Jurgen Klopp told BT Sport: “We trained this morning, we were at the hotel and he had to leave to have a scan”.

Klopp later said at a press conference that the 26-year-old should learn to manage pain as the Merseyside giants prepare for their Premier League game against Swansea City tomorrow without Sturridge. Now we can say it’s not that serious but he still can’t go on as before.

“Usually, in a ideal world, you should train five weeks in a row when you have been out this long like in pre-season”.

“But it’s always important how far you are away from the position you dream off. It’s better to be eight than 20 but two would be better than eight, so we have to try and close this gap if possible and that’s what we try”. When you think past year he had the surgery, had a really long period out, and has played only three games, and now we have to stay patient I am sorry to say.

Klopp drew parallels to the careers of Lewandowski and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, two strikers he brought to Dortmund and who lead the Bundesliga goalscoring chart with 14 and 15 goals respectively, Lewandowski now being at Bayern Munich. I am very happy to be qualified, the team is happy to be qualified, the club is happy to be qualified so you can be happy to be qualified if you want. “We had some new things to talk about, so we have to make some assessment”, he said at Melwood.

“Everything we do is 120 per cent so you need to be prepared for this”.

‘The thing is, with professional football, it’s not often any player will take to the field 100 per cent fit.

Jurgen Klopp has described Lucas as a “very important player” for Liverpool, despite the Brazilian midfielder being suspended for the team’s match against Swansea City in the Premier League this weekend.

Klopp was not even bothered by the mistake by goalkeeper Simon Mignolet – holding on to the ball for 22 seconds – which cost them the opening goal when Henri Saivet converted from the free-kick.

“I don’t know too much about the situation because it was in the afternoon after training. We have to decide”.

“It’s not the most hard situation with the strikers because we have Christian Benteke, Divock Origi and Roberto (Firmino)”, he said. Do the club start to think they need to move him on, to get a good fee and save on his big wages?