Liverpool have reportedly been given an encouraging update on the knee injury suffered by Cody Gakpo in Saturday’s 2-1 defeat to Tottenham.
The 24-year-old was withdrawn at half-time, just minutes after netting his team’s equaliser, with Jurgen Klopp fearing that the problem could potentially be ‘a bad one’ (liverpoolfc.com).
However, reports from Netherlands on Tuesday morning have offered encouragement that the attacker won’t be sidelined for too long.
According to Algemeen Dagblad (via Sport Witness), ‘insiders’ have indicated that ‘nothing is broken’ and, following initial reports of Gakpo being ruled out for up to six weeks, that has since been downgraded to ‘at least until after the upcoming international break’.
This latest report offers some hope that the 24-year-old might be able to return for Liverpool in the Merseyside derby against Everton on 21 October, our first fixture after the upcoming internationals.
That may yet prove overly ambitious in terms of a comeback date, but the picture definitely seems brighter now than it did over the preceding 24-48 hours.
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Gakpo’s injury has come at an unfortunate time for him as he’d just been coming into a rich vein of form, scoring in three of his last four appearances for the Reds since mid-September (Transfermarkt).
That body blow, allied with Diogo Jota’s suspension, leaves Jurgen Klopp short of options in attack for Sunday’s Premier League clash at Brighton beyond the expected starting trio of Mo Salah, Darwin Nunez and Luis Diaz – assuming none of those three pick up any injuries of their own ahead of the weekend.
If the Dutchman is to only miss Liverpool’s two matches over the coming week (plus Netherlands’ games later this month) and return for the derby, that’d absolutely be a scenario we’d take right now.