Jurgen Klopp has grown all too accustomed to issues regarding team selection following the international break.
And a combination of injuries, suspensions and late returns mean the Liverpool manager will have another headache when his team are back in Premier League action at home to Everton on Saturday at 12.30pm.
It’ll be the 13th such early kick-off for the Reds during Klopp’s tenure, a number that will increase further with the trip to Manchester City next month. Indeed, Liverpool will have then taken part in six of the last eight 12.30pm kick-offs after an international break – matching the entire total of the next club over a period of more than eight years.
But no matter the problems with which Klopp has to contend during the next week, they won’t compare to the decisions that had to be made for the game that started that sequence of early starts two years ago today.
The Reds headed to Watford not only having to deal with another lunchtime post-international break fixture, but also the implications of coronavirus travel restrictions as the world slowly returned to normal after the destabilising impact of the pandemic.
The need to catch up on World Cup qualifiers saw South America national teams play three times inside eight days, the latter game taking place barely 36 hours before Liverpool were due to step out at Vicarage Road.
The Reds wanted the game put back to 7.45pm. Watford, as was their right, refused. The Premier League, meanwhile, sat back and did nothing. And quarantine rules meant Liverpool had no choice but to send Brazilian duo Alisson Becker and Fabinho direct to Spain to prepare for the Champions League against Atletico Madrid the following midweek. Atletico, by the way, had helpfully seen their La Liga game that weekend postponed by the authorities after being placed in a similar predicament to the Reds.
Liverpool just had to crack on. And that they did, as Roberto Firmino scored a hat-trick, Sadio Mane also notched and Mohamed Salah posted a goal-of-the-season contender as the Reds romped to a 5-0 win. Caoimhin Kelleher, making only his third Premier League start in place of the absent Alisson, had barely a save to make.
Intriguing, though, is how the line-up that afternoon will differ from the one that begins at Anfield for the 243rd Merseyside derby next weekend.
Kelleher is injured, while five of the starting line-up – Mane, Firmino, James Milner, Naby Keita and Jordan Henderson – have since departed, while it’s expected Andy Robertson will also be missing after dislocating his shoulder playing for Scotland in Spain last Thursday. Even among the nine substitutes, four – Neco Williams, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Takumi Minamino and Divock Origi – have gone while of the duo who instead went to Spain, Fabinho has also exited.
It means at most there will be four starters from that afternoon in Watford – Salah, Virgil van Dijk, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Joel Matip – who will expect to begin against Everton, while Ibrahima Konate, Joe Gomez, Kostas Tsimikas, Diogo Jota, all on the bench at Vicarage Road, will also challenge.
But a reminder of that afternoon underlines that while the personnel change, the problems foisted upon Liverpool and Klopp by the fixture planners remain very much the same.
