January 09, (THEWILL) – Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has admitted that the COVID-19 “outbreak” that forced their Carabao Cup semi-final first leg against Arsenal to be postponed was only one positive occurrence.
In the build-up to the game, the Reds dealt with a number of positive cases, with Alisson, Joel Matip, and Roberto Firmino being held in isolation, while Klopp and assistant Pep Lijnders were both absent following positive tests.
After a new “outbreak” was discovered, it was deemed that Liverpool would be unable to field a team for the semi-final due to the number of players who had tested positive, but Klopp has now admitted that just Trent Alexander-Arnold was verified to be positive.
“The situation is just like this,” Klopp explained, “We had what we thought last week was a proper outbreak and it showed up that we had a lot of false positive results actually.
“But the rules are like they are so all these players who are false positives couldn’t play today. Or we decided not to play them or whatever. Could we have played them? I don’t know exactly but we had to make that decision.
“The only real extra positive from the team came from Trent Alexander-Arnold and all the rest were false positives, so it was a really tough week because the boys couldn’t train.
“We had to close the training ground because you have two extra testing grounds, so it’s really difficult.”
Because of the postponement, what was supposed to be the second leg on Thursday will now be the first, with the new second leg on January 20 at the Emirates Stadium.
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
