Liverpool Quartet Cleared to Face Leicester Following Covid Isolation

The worst appears over for Liverpool on the Covid front, at least for now, with the players who tested positive before Christmas and were forced to miss Newcastle and Tottenham in the league and Leicester City in the League Cup now having been cleared.

That was the news from Jürgen Klopp at his pre-match press conference today, with the manager revealing that all four had returned to training in recent days with Virgil van Dijk, Fabinho, Thiago, and Curtis Jones all recovered and returned from isolation.

“The boys who had Covid are back,” Klopp told reporters ahead of their league game against Leicester. “That means that Fab, Virgil, Curtis, and Thiago are back. Thiago was the latest, he came back and trained yesterday for the first time with the team.

“We have one young player who is now isolating and two staff. It’s really tricky, every morning when you come in it feels a little bit like a lottery, you hope everything is fine and then maybe a case, but that’s the situation and apart from that we are fine.”

With Liverpool’s Boxing Day match on Sunday against Leeds United having been postponed due to an outbreak at Leeds, it means the Reds should be well rested when they face off against a Leicester side that lost to Manchester City over the weekend.

In their previous game, the cup match against Leicester, it was their opponents who had just come off an unexpected break due to Covid forcing the postponement of some of their matches and at least in theory giving them the advantage of more rest.

Leicester being more rested for their previous meeting, though, didn’t stop a Liverpool side made up of youth and reserve players from taking the game to penalties and winning to advance to the semi-finals of England’s second cup competition.