Liverpool have been dealt a further injury blow on the eve of their League Cup semi-final first leg after Trent Alexander-Arnold was ruled out for at least three weeks with a knee injury.
The 25-year-old tore a lateral ligament after hyper-extending the joint in Sunday’s FA Cup win at Arsenal and is not expected to feature until the end of the month at the earliest.
Given Jurgen Klopp’s team have a winter break, Alexander-Arnold may only miss three matches — the two legs of the League Cup semi-final and the Premier League match at Bournemouth — and could be back for Chelsea’s visit to Anfield on January 31.
Liverpool are already without defenders Joel Matip, Andy Robertson and Kostas Tsimikas with Joe Gomez having to deputise at left back. However, it will be Alexander-Arnold’s creative influence that will be missed most as he has two goals and eight assists this season from his hybrid role.
“He hyper-extended his knee in the game and he has a little tear in the lateral ligament and will be out probably three weeks,” Pep Lijnders, Liverpool’s assistant manager, said.
“A big blow, he is one of our most important players, creates a lot of dynamics and is always decisive.
“Even in bad spells, he was the one who put the balls where we would make the difference. We will have to find new dynamics without him as he made our game flexible, so it is a big blow.
“Hopefully [he’ll only be out for] three weeks and with the winter break in-between so [he will miss] only a few games.”
Virgil van Dijk is back available after illness but Dominik Szoboszlai remains sidelined due to a hamstring injury. Conor Bradley could come under consideration for a start as the 20-year-old Northern Ireland international impressed when coming off the bench at the weekend.
Regardless, Lijnders believes they will find a way to handle Alexander-Arnold’s absence, as they have already had to do with Mohamed Salah and Wataru Endo currently away on international duty with Egypt and Japan, respectively.
“We have many weapons so there is no one irreplaceable here,” Lijnders said ahead of tonight’s first leg against Fulham.
“Mo goes away, [Diogo] Jota steps up. If the best players are not there and you play really well — the second half against Arsenal — then that’s a really good sign and that’s what we’ve always done.
“We don’t rely on one, two, three or four players. We are missing three core players from our leadership group — Robbo, Trent, Mo — so that’s a blow of course.
“We now we have to find solutions without Trent as well but, again, this squad has so much talent, so much power, and as long as counter-pressing is there everything else is replaceable.”
Liverpool are attempting to reach the League Cup final for the 14th time, having last won the competition in 2022. They are currently top of the Premier League table and have progressed into the Europa League last-16 and FA Cup fourth round, in which they will host Norwich or Bristol Rovers.
“We all dream when we are young; you want to play in the most iconic stadiums in the world, and Wembley is one of them — it has so much history, so many memories we already made there,” Lijnders said.
“So you want to go there. I think the team has this hunger. It’s the closest final we can reach. But we have to respect Fulham. They have a very clear way, a good offensive idea, really creative.”
Silva: It's a great challenge for us
Fulham enter the tie as underdogs having not reached this stage of a domestic cup competition for over 20 years and never previously won a major trophy. However, Marco Silva’s team will view this as a good opportunity to demonstrate their development.
They led Liverpool 3-2 in the league at Anfield last month before the home team scored two stunning late goals and will back themselves to be in with a chance when they host the second leg.
“It’s a great challenge for us, no doubt,” Silva said. “It’s a big pride for us to be there, to achieve something that the club have never achieved. But you want to aim for more, we want to have the ambition to be at Wembley. If you get the chance, it’s because we worked so hard to be there.
“We have to play really at our best level, and be clever enough from a tactical point of view in some moments to manage well the game because we have a chance to have a second game at home to decide something.
“We gave them a really good game, we were able to punish them in some moments really well. We know that [Jurgen’s] going to be aware of what we can do. And let’s hope we can repeat the performance from December but with a different result.”
