OPINION
Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp told the club’s official website recently that midfielder Adam Lallana will be in contention to face Huddersfield Town on Saturday.
And the England international, on a reported £65,000-per-week at the club [Source: Spotrac], must realise that he is entering make or break territory at Anfield.
The 30-year-old is a wonderfully talented player but he simply hasn’t been able to stay fit long enough to produce a consistent run of form.
If you’re not available to play regularly then it doesn’t matter how good a player you are, you’re useless to your manager. That’s the reality facing Lallana at the moment; we all know he has talent but that’s simply not enough when you suffer constant injuries.
Daniel Sturridge has shown this season that it’s possible to work your way back from injuries and loss of form to become a valuable member of this Reds squad.
Lallana will be looking at his fellow Englishman and thinking ‘why can’t I do that?’ The answer is that there is no reason why he can’t do what Sturridge has done, but he has to approach this campaign with the same urgency that the former Chelsea man has.
Sturridge’s Liverpool contract is up at the end of the season so time is obviously running out for him a little more readily than it is for Lallana, but the pair are in a similar situation.
It’s imperative that the former Southampton star stays fit from now until the end of the season, because otherwise Klopp will see him as a luxury he can’t afford moving forward.
The talent that Lallana has cannot easily be replaced, but Liverpool have shown in recent years that they can manage just fine without him.
The midfielder needs to show over the course of this campaign that he is once again a key members of Klopp’s squad. If he doesn’t, it could be night-night for Lallana’s Anfield career.
