Liverpool will be missing Alisson Becker for another two matches at least - against Sheffield United this evening and then FC Midtjylland on Tuesday night - according to the Brazilian national team's physio.
Alisson has been named in the Brazil squad for the next set of international fixtures in mid-November, and Liverpool had been hopeful that he would be back for the game against West Ham United in the Premier League a week today.
Jurgen Klopp was relatively upbeat about the situation in his press conference yesterday afternoon and had previously hinted at Alisson being ahead of schedule.
There had been some optimism that Alisson could be back playing again before West Ham in some quarters, but Brazil's physio has appeared to suggest that Liverpool will have to use Adrian in goal for their next two games, as was expected a few days ago.
"Alisson had a shoulder injury on September 30, a trauma. An athlete from his own team fell on his shoulder," explained Fabio Mahseredjian, via The Metro.
"On October 15, he was back for training sessions and Dr. Rodrigo Lasmar [Brazil Chief Medical Officer], in contact with Liverpool’s medical department, gave us a heads up by saying that Alisson would probably be available to Klopp, to Liverpool’s technical staff, on October 31.
"He would have three games before joining the Brazil team."
Klopp was coy on whether Alisson, Thiago Alcantara and Joel Matip, who all missed the win against Ajax midweek, would be involved at Anfield against Chris Wilder's side when he addressed the media yesterday afternoon.
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He said : "I don’t know. We have training after the press conference, so we will see who is out there. You can only be in contention if you are in training!
"Look, in my situation, I don’t want to rule anybody out until someone tells me and so far, nobody told me. Maybe I should have listened better!
"But for me, everybody apart from the three I mentioned are in contention until somebody tells me different."
Should there be any doubt over Alisson's condition, Liverpool will not take the risk in putting him back into the side.
But with Virgil van Dijk set to miss a significant proportion of the season through an ACL injury, getting their first-choice goalkeeper back in from the start will be an important step for Klopp moving forwards.
