Liverpool legend Steve Nicol has admitted that he’s worried sick by Jurgen Klopp’s verdict on attacker Roberto Firmino’s injury.
The Brazil international sat out Friday’s 5-0 victory over Huddersfield Town, with what Klopp told Liverpool’s official website was a ‘small tear in a small muscle’.
Nicole isn’t buying it: “That’s not good,” he told ESPN. “He didn’t say ‘a little fibre’ or ‘just a tweak’, it’s a tear. That puts a different spin on it completely, for me. I don’t like the sound of that.
“When the press are talking to you as a coach, you really don’t want to tell them the truth. You’re always trying to, kind of, cover things a little bit. And if he thought Bobby Firmino was going to play [against Barcelona on Wednesday] he would have said ‘look, he’s got a wee knock but he’ll be fine’.
“But when you start going into detail and using words like ‘tear’, that scares me.”
OPINION
It’s hard to argue with what Nicol is saying here. You do get the feeling that Firmino’s problem may very well be more serious than Klopp let on after the win over the Terriers. A small tear is a bit of a strange thing to say. You generally don’t get small tears, once something has been torn it’s torn. There’s no real coming back from that in quick order. So Firmino is a real concern for the Barcelona clash, there’s no doubt about that. That’s what Nicol is saying here and it makes perfect sense. If Firmino does end up missing the Champions League semi final first leg then it would be a huge blow to Klopp’s team, that’s something we can all agree on. The Brazilian isn’t as prolific as either Mohamed Salah or Sadio Mane – certainly not this season – but he is arguably more crucial than either of them to the way the Reds play and the frenetic style of pressing that Klopp employs. So we’ll have to wait until Wednesday for the truth of this one, but it’s certainly a concern, as Nicol underlines here.
