Andy Lonergan Set to Join Liverpool on Short Term Contract

The club confirmed what had been the rumour circulating all day Monday, the fact that they were signing goalkeeper Andy Lonergan on a short term loan to deal with Alisson’s absence and third choice Caoimhin Kelleher’s continued fitness issues.

Lonergan trained with the Reds during pre-season, and has continued training at Melwood.

Unless Liverpool start going through goalkeepers like Spinal Tap drummers, it seems unlikely that we’ll see Lonergan get any minutes with the team. While improbable, fans of the club may look back at 2012 to remember that it wouldn’t be an unprecedented occurrence for the club. Cast your minds back to April of that year. First Pepe Reina and then Doni both received red cards, one game after the other, leading to Brad Jones getting his day in the sun. The Australian first saved the penalty that resulted from Doni’s red card, and then in the next game, assisted in Liverpool’s come-from-behind victory against Everton in the FA Cup semi-final. He was a good egg, that Brad Jones.

So, improbable, but not impossible. What is probably, however, is that Lonergan will make the bench on Wednesday in the UEFA Super Cup tie against Chelsea in Istanbul.

Regarding the game of goalkeeping musical chairs, Jürgen Klopp told the official site, “The situation was even more difficult a few weeks ago because of injuries, but Caoimhin Kelleher is now in his final steps for being completely back.

“He’s training only [for] five days or so, catching balls and all that stuff, it looks all good but of course we have to find a solution in the short term and that will be, if nothing happens from now to then, Andy Lonergan.

“He was in with us, he’s a brilliant character, a really nice lad and helped us a lot in the pre-season and now we decided to work together with him.

“So that’s a very experienced solution but in the moment when Caoimhin is back then obviously Adrian is No.1, Caoimhin probably No.2 but we have to see how then he can have some games with the U23s or U21s [so] that he gets match practice as well.

“We have to see how that works but that’s then how we cover that situation.”

Not ideal, but nothing was going to be ideal about this situation. Let’s hope that the defense steps up to make the next few weeks as painless as possible while we wait for Alisson’s return.