Injured Andrew Robertson Admits He Was “Lucky” to Get Through Crystal Palace Match

After sitting out the international break to rest his injured ankle, Andy Robertson was back in action against Crystal Palace. Unfortunately, it appears it wasn’t a pain-free outing for the world’s best left back.

Robertson admitted he was playing through pain against Palace, and he has now raised the possibility that he could miss games in the coming weeks if the injury doesn’t begin to show signs of real improvement.

“It is still painful but it is something that I gave time for it to improve,” Robertson told the club’s official website. “Hopefully in time it will be better. I was desperate to play and the gaffer asked me if I was okay.

“I believed I was and luckily I got through the game. You don’t want to miss any games but if it means him missing one game rather than six, that is a big difference. Sometimes you need to be a bit clever.”

Sitting out one or two games in order to avoid a lengthy layoff had been the theory behind Robertson sitting out for Scotland, who already knew they would be reliant on a spring playoff to have a chance at Euro 2020.

Now, with Liverpool playing two games a week—or more, even, as with the League Cup and Club World Cup double-header in December—there seem little obvious opportunities for Robertson to rest and heal.

Hopefully, then, the ankle will heal while he plays. That, though, isn’t how these injuries tend to work, and whether it’s a game or extended stretch, the club need to prepare themselves for the possibility he will be absent.

Right now, though, Robertson is focusing on the positives. Like that he got through Saturday’s game and that, despite the difficulty of it, in the end Liverpool came away with all three points against a difficult opponent.

“We have 37 points out of 39 so to say anything negative is harsh,” he noted. “If we don’t keep clean sheets we need to be winning. We want to get back to clean sheets and hopefully we can do that in our next game.

“Hopefully we can do that and still score goals, [but] last season we had a better defensive record but did not have as many points, so we need to put it into perspective.”