It’s bad new on the injury front today for Liverpool and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, with manager Jürgen Klopp telling the press that the midfielder will be out for at least the next few weeks—and possibly for much longer than that.
It’s another blow for the 26-year-old, who missed the majority of the 2018-19 campaign with a knee injury suffered at the end of the previous season. This time, though, it’s ligament damage in Oxlade-Chamberlain’s ankle rather than knee.
“You have three ligaments on the outside of the ankle, and Alex has one of them damaged,” Klopp explained to the gathered journalists at his pre-Leicester City press conference today. “Now we will have to see how quickly we can fix it.
“It can take a while or be quick, but clearly he has no chance for Boxing Day and no chance for the rest of this year. Everyone else is fit, which is good news, apart from the long-term injured players who are not ready to come back yet.”
Those long-term injured players are Fabinho, Joël Matip, and Dejan Lovren, all of whom continue to improve but who are unlikely to be involved in match action before the start of the new year.