Arne Slot has confirmed that Ibrahima Konate felt something in his “quad” as Liverpool face a potential injury crisis at centre-back following defeat to Chelsea.
The France international limped off early in the second half of the 2-1 defeat at Stamford Bridge, with Ryan Gravenberch dropping into defence from holding midfield.
Slot said that he would have made that change anyway as Liverpool chased an equaliser at Chelsea, but the head coach revealed he was forced to make it earlier than planned.
Konate’s injury will ring alarm bells after Liverpool missed out on the deadline-day signing of Crystal Palace’s Marc Guehi and went into the season with Virgil van Dijk, Konate and Joe Gomez as established options in defence.
Liverpool did sign a centre-back in 18-year-old Giovanni Leoni, but the Italian suffered a serious knee injury on his debut against Southampton in the Carabao Cup and is expected to be out for a year.
Slot’s side do not play again until they welcome Manchester United following the international break, so there is time for Konate to recover. Slot also hinted that his substitution was precautionary.
“I don’t know if it is a big injury,” Slot told Sky Sports. “He limped a little bit. I asked him and he felt his quad. It was a substitution I already had in mind because the right centre-back had a lot of ball possession and we needed to create from that position. Ryan is quite good at that.
“It might be ok that he went off early enough.”
Slot added to Match of the Day: “Not 100 per cent sure if he’s injured, he felt his quad and if a player feels his quad when he’s running then alarm bells go on for me.
“If the game had gone on like this I would’ve taken him off later anyway because we needed Ryan in that position. The main reason was he felt his quad but we wanted Ryan in that position at 1-0. That worked well with us being dominant in that part of the game.”
Konate had started next to Van Dijk in Liverpool’s defeats at Crystal Palace and Galatasaray. Slot had rotated much of his team between the three games, but he did not do so at centre-back, with Slot admitting that was a “risk”.
“If I rotate against Gala, people complain I rotate,” he said. “It is a risk, Konate played three games in eight days. That is the balance you need to find. Playing a tough game against Palace, you need strong defenders. When you play Chelsea away, you also need strong centre-backs.
“After the goal, we took the risk to play a midfielder at the back.”
Konate has been called up to the France squad for the international break but that may change depending on the severity of the injury.
