A moment of celebration at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium turned into an immediate injury concern for Alexander Isak. Isak\u2019s leg was trapped under Micky van de Ven following the Dutchman\u2019s last-ditch attempts to block the shot and it was immediately clear that the Liverpool forward was in serious discomfort. With the help of medical staff, he trudged off the pitch, grimacing all the way.<\/p>\n
An MRI scan confirmed the 26-year-old fractured the fibula in his left leg. He also suffered damage to his ankle, although there has been no confirmation of ligament damage. The injury will keep Isak out for months rather than days, and manager Arne Slot is hoping it\u2019ll be a \u201ccouple of months\u201d which would actually represent a very speed recovery in the grand scheme of things.<\/p>\n
Isak will not have the chance to build on just his third goal for the Reds across all competitions for some time. He has already endured setbacks this season, missing seven games for club and country. A lack of match fitness after his move from Newcastle United contributed to a slow start on Merseyside, and an adductor injury kept him out from late October to early November.<\/p>\n
If Slot\u2019s two-month estimate holds, Isak is unlikely to return until the beginning of March. That absence would mean missing a minimum of 14 and a maximum of 17 matches for Liverpool, the higher figure contingent on the Reds being involved in a Champions League knockout play-off round and reaching the FA Cup fourth round.<\/p>\n
Key fixtures he would miss include the final Champions League group games against Marseille (A) and Qaraba\u011f (H) and Premier League clashes with Arsenal (A), Manchester City (H) and a reunion with Newcastle (H) at the end of January.<\/p>\n
Hugo Ekitik\u00e9 is in excellent goalscoring form, but an injury to the Frenchman would leave Liverpool with no other natural centre forward options. Federico Chiesa, Cody Gakpo and Mohamed Salah, the latter currently at the Africa Cup of Nations, are unorthodox alternatives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Isak faces months out after fracturing his fibula; Liverpool may lose him for 14 to 17 matches long<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5389,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,172,1125],"tags":[1254,195,947],"class_list":["post-5390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-epl","category-strikers","tag-adductor-injury","tag-alexander-isak","tag-ankle-injury"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5390","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=5390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}