Jurgen Klopp has confirmed that both Mohamed Salah and Philippe Coutinho will not play for Liverpool against Everton in their FA Cup third round clash at Anfield on Friday.
The duo both missed Liverpool’s 2-1 win at Burnley on Monday and the Merseyside derby in the FA Cup has come too soon even though they “are not big injuries” to deal with.
Speaking to reporters, Klopp also said that new $100 million signing Virgil van Dijk could make his Liverpool debut following his move from Southampton.
“Mo (Salah) and Phil (Coutinho) are not available. Virgil (van Dijk) is obviously healthy, we’ll see what we do with him,” Klopp said. “With Virgil it is different, he is healthy and now I have to make a decision for this game,” explained Klopp. “It is not finally done, so we will see what we do with him. It is clear centre-half is a position that usually needs to be tuned to the rest of the team, the kind of defending and stuff like that, but of course I can imagine everyone is desperate to see him on the pitch.
“But as I have said before, from our point of view there is no rush for us in this situation and it’s much more important how many good games he can play for us than how many and when it starts. It is not decided and how it always is in this period, we have to wait a little bit for last updates on each position and then we make the line-up.”
Liverpool’s German manager also added that he believes Coutinho will be available for selection for the Jan. 14 clash against Manchester City at Anfield and danced around questions regarding the Brazilian playmakers future at Liverpool.
With reports circulating that Coutinho could be sold to Barcelona either in January or in the summer, Klopp brushed all of that talk aside in his press conference after previously laughing off the fact that Nike released adverts earlier this week promoting Coutinho as a Barcelona player.
As for the players who will be featuring against Everton, Klopp confirmed that Loris Karius will play in goal and that he will play his strongest line up possible and won’t have one eye on the league encounter with Man City in 10 days time.