International breaks have not been kind to Liverpool over the years, particularly concerning one Daniel Sturridge. Aside from a brief scare over Danny Ings, all has been pretty quiet on the internationals injury front.
Quiet, that is, until last night. As the clock approached the 80th minute, and with the England U-21s already ahead 2-0 over Kazakhstan in their European Championship qualifier, Joe Gomez picked up a knock to his knee from a seemingly "Innocuous challenge" near the corner flag, and had to be helped off the pitch.
Reports indicate that the injury to the young defender is not as serious as initially feared, as it appears he merely tweaked--as opposed to strained, sprained, or torn--a knee ligament. There is no word yet as to how long Gomez is expected to be out.
With Dejan Lovren already out with a long-term injury and other youth prospects out on loan, a lengthy recovery time for Gomez could bring into question the lack of depth at center back for the club. However, that concern should be slightly alleviated by the expected change from three center backs to two under new manager Jürgen Klopp.
If this is the worst news to come out of an otherwise very positive international break for Liverpool, the Reds can consider themselves very lucky.
Other squads suffered some huge set backs this break: Newcastle lost goalkeeper Tim Krul for the rest of the season with an ACL rupture; Chelsea's Branislav Ivanovic suffered a hamstring injury; and Manchester City were particularly hard-hit, losing Sergio Aguero for at least a month with a muscle tear, Aleksandar Kolarov for an unspecified amount of time with a hamstring injury, and David Silva will be recovering from an ankle injury for at least 2-3 weeks.