Liverpool manager Arne Slot has given an update on Alexander Isak’s fitness as the striker hopes to make his debut for the club this weekend. Isak completed a £125 million deadline day move to Anfield from Newcastle United.
Isak is yet to play any domestic football this season, with him training away from the main Newcastle group amid speculation over his future throughout the summer. In fact, Isak’s first minutes this campaign came for Sweden as a second half substitute in the 2-0 loss against Kosovo on Monday.
He has since returned to Liverpool and has been training with his new teammates for the first time this week. He could make his debut for the club when Liverpool take on Burnley at Turf Moor on Sunday afternoon (2pm kick-off).
Ahead of that game, Slot has given the latest on Isak’s fitness, saying that the club will be cautious with his return to action. “First of all I think the Swedish manager Jon Dahl Tomasson deserves a big, big, big compliment because he gets one of the best, maybe the best striker in the world in and he needs to play two very important games for his country but understands that if he would play him twice for 90 minutes then probably the player would have been injured for multiple weeks,” he said in his pre-match press conference.
“And that’s not always easy for a manager, that he takes care of the interest of a player, so he deserves a big compliment for that and we will treat Alex the same as they did.
“So don’t expect him to be every single game 90 minutes on the pitch. That is definitely not going to happen in the upcoming weeks.
“He missed a proper pre-season, I think he missed three or four months of team sessions so now we have to build him up gradually.
“With us playing so many games, hardly any training time, so that is going to be a challenge.
“But we have signed him not only for the upcoming weeks, but we have signed him for six years, so this is what we have to keep in mind and what the fans have to keep in mind if they see that I take him off at a certain moment or if I only bring him in for a small amount of minutes.
“That is all for the long-term fitness of the player.”
Isak is not the only player Liverpool will be monitoring in terms of fitness ahead of the game. Slot has also confirmed a blow over the availability of midfielder Curtis Jones.
Here’s the latest from the treatment room at Anfield…
Curtis Jones
Injury: Unknown.
What Slot has said: “Curtis Jones, of course, I don’t know if you knew, but he got injured in the last game.
“He will not be available for the game against Burnley, but I think the rest of them all came back without a problem and that is not always the situation.”
Possible return date: Unknown.
Jeremie Frimpong
Injury: Hamstring.
After missing the last two games with an injury picked up against Bournemouth in the opening game of the season, Frimpong has returned to training and is expected to be back in contention for the game against Burnley.
Possible return date: vs Burnley (A) (14 September).