Liverpool arrived at the campaign already short on centre back cover, and Ibrahima Konat\u00e9’s exit at Stamford Bridge intensified those concerns. The 26-year-old was withdrawn after 56 minutes at Chelsea with a quad problem, leaving the club fearing the worst at the end of a week in which Arne Slot lost three matches on the bounce for the first time in his Liverpool tenure.<\/p>\n
Slot described what he saw at full time. \u201cI don’t know if it\u2019s a big injury, but I do know that he limped,\u201d Slot said after the Chelsea game . \u201cAnd I asked him, and he said; \u2018I feel my quad a little bit\u2019. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo it might be okay and he went off early enough, but it was clear that I had to take him off because he was limping.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the concerns, Konat\u00e9 still joined up with the France squad for the October international break. He sat out a France training session on Tuesday evening because of his fitness, and instead spent time signing autographs for supporters alongside fellow absentee Kylian Mbapp\u00e9. France boss Didier Deschamps has said he did not have \u201cany additional information\u201d on those struggling with fitness and is expected to provide more detail ahead of the World Cup qualifiers against Azerbaijan and Iceland.<\/p>\n
The fact Konat\u00e9 linked up with Les Bleus suggests the quad issue may not be serious, but Liverpool will be wary of any aggravation should he play during the international break. If Konat\u00e9 is sidelined, Liverpool would be reduced to Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez as senior, orthodox central defensive options. Gomez has struggled to win favour under Slot and has a reputation for being injury-prone; he has made only three appearances and played 119 minutes in all competitions this term.<\/p>\n
Slot used Ryan Gravenberch as a makeshift centre back at Stamford Bridge after Konat\u00e9’s withdrawal, and Wataru Endo has been sparingly used at centre back since joining Liverpool. Should Konat\u00e9 join Leoni in the treatment room, the defensive resources available to Slot will be stretched further.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Konat\u00e9’s Chelsea withdrawal leaves Liverpool thin at centre back during international break. fitness<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3655,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,969],"tags":[299,1100],"class_list":["post-3656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-premier-league","tag-arne-slot","tag-defence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}