Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain will miss the rest of 2019 with the injury he sustained in the Club World Cup win over Flamengo, Jürgen Klopp has revealed.
The midfielder has ankle ligament damage, an injury Klopp once sustained as a player, so the Liverpool manager is familiar with the time needed for recovery.
“You have three ligaments on the outside of the ankle, and Alex has one of them damaged,” Klopp said. “Now we will have to see how quickly we can fix it. It can take a while or be quite quick, but clearly he has no chance for Boxing Day and no chance for the rest of this year. Everyone else is fit, which is good news, apart from the long-term injured players [Fabinho, Dejan Lovren, Joël Matip] who are all in a really good way but not ready to come back yet.”
Should Liverpool win at Leicester on Boxing Day their lead over the club in second place would stretch to 13 points with a game in hand. People are saying the title race could be over at the halfway point, though Klopp is unconcerned. “People can think and talk about what they want,” the Liverpool manager said. “If anyone wants to think things are over before they are over we cannot stop them doing that, though it is not important to us. As a group we are pretty good at shutting the doors all around us to keep out the noise from outside.”
Klopp is all too aware of the threat posed by Brendan Rodgers’s Leicester and Jamie Vardy in particular, for in his time in England he has made no secret of his admiration for the striker, not least because he has scored some impressive goals against Liverpool.
“We will try to stop him but they have quality running right through their team,” Klopp explained. “Their league position does not surprise me when you look at the players they have and the fact that they do not have to play in Europe this season, but Vardy is a tough test for any defence. Since I’ve been in England he’s always been in the top three scorers; he’s really dangerous and hard to stop.”
When Liverpool resume their Premier League programme they will do so as official Fifa champions of the world, though as far as Klopp is concerned that is noise to be shut out too. “We are getting better at playing in finals – I suppose we are getting used to it, and that is all good,” Klopp said. “I can’t see opponents raising their game against us because we now have that title, because they do that already. I noticed it more than anything at Newcastle last season, but everywhere we go we are always a scalp.”
While Liverpool were in Qatar Everton were busy installing Carlo Ancelotti as their manager, the one man who can claim a win against one of Klopp’s full-strength Liverpool teams all season, with Napoli. “I like Carlo a lot and I wish him luck,” Klopp said. “It will be nice to met him at least a couple of times in the season, and I know I will see him early next month at Anfield, but to be honest I couldn’t be further away from thinking about the FA Cup at the moment. We have three important league games to play first.”