Sadio Mané Faces Season-Ending Knee Surgery

The scan results are in, and as feared, Sadio Mané's knee injury is bad enough that surgery is expected to be required to repair his damaged meniscus ligament and that it will rule out the Liverpool and Senegal star for the remainder of the 2016-17 season.

However, according to The Liverpool Echo, a date for the surgery has not been set as Mané wants to wait for the swelling in his knee to come down fully in the hopes he can play out the final games of the season before undergoing his operation in the summer.

Even if the swelling comes down and the damage ends up being minor enough that immediate surgery isn't necessary, the attacking star will need to go under the knife at some point, and continuing to play on it would increase the chances of greater injury.

That means that while the club is holding off calling his season over and scheduling the operation, the belief is that it is only a matter of time before they do so. In the unlikely event the swelling goes down and Mané is ruled fit, he would still miss the next two games.

The last time Liverpool were without Mané, Jürgen Klopp's side struggled through their worst run of form this year. With their hold on the top four tenuous, there are rightly concerns that Mané's absence could lead to a failure to qualify for the Champions League.

They will have a chance to quell some of those nerves tonight against Bournemouth, the kind of side that in the past Liverpool have often struggled against and a side that won their last match by 4-3 back in December.