Jordan Henderson believes Liverpool’s poor start to the season can partly be put down to injury issues.
Speaking to the Liverpool Echo, Henderson said that while he couldn’t put his finger on the problem exactly, injuries ‘haven’t helped.
“I think there’s numerous things that have led to our start this year. Obviously, injuries haven’t helped but I don’t want to make excuses. It hasn’t been the start that we would have hoped for but there is still a long way to go and hopefully, now after the international break, we can really kickstart our season,” said the Liverpool captain.
With the Reds now not far off having a fully fit squad, hopefully things will improve.
No excuses now for Liverpool
It’s clear that injuries have played a role in Liverpool being off the boil this season. Had they had a full complement available to them at the start of the campaign, they could have hit the ground running.
The subsequent problems of disappearing confidence and mental fatigue could perhaps then have been avoided.
But with Liverpool forced to rely heavily on the same group of players in the early weeks, they are now already playing catch up.
That being said, Liverpool have largely had their top players available to them. The likes of Virgil Van Dijk, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Mohamed Salah have been consistently fit from the get-go.
These are all big players in world football and should make Liverpool instantly better. For whatever reason though, they’ve all been off the boil this season. So have a number of their other influential teammates.
Liverpool’s midfield has been an issue of course, and a few injuries have occurred there. But Jurgen Klopp was able to field his first-choice trio of Henderson, Thiago Alcantara and Fabinho at the weekend.
He did so as well on the opening day at Fulham. And still Liverpool looked incredibly vulnerable.
Whatever the solution is to the Reds current woes, it has to come quickly. They face a huge two weeks with a Champions League double-header against Rangers and clashes with Arsenal and Manchester City. Fail to rectify things and their season could be pretty well over by the end of that run.
