Patrick van Straaten has been speaking on the latest edition of the Sunday Vibes show to discuss a potential future injury crisis for Liverpool at full-back.
Jurgen Klopp has endured an injury crisis already this season at centre-back, including the long-term injury sustained by Virgil van Dijk at Goodison Park last October.
He voiced his concern over the same trend repeating itself next season if Liverpool fail to find adequate backups for Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson in the summer.
The English right-back has already played 3115 minutes for Liverpool across all competitions this term; meanwhile, Robertson has featured slightly less but has still racked up 2756 minutes for the Reds.
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Discussing the two full-backs, Van Straaten voiced his concern at a lack of rest the players are likely to get over the next year with both the European Championship and World Cup to be played.
He said: “Once again, though, [Andy] Robertson and Trent [Alexander-Arnold] have been overplayed. And obviously, this season is going to roll straight into the Euros, which will roll straight into next season, which will then roll into a World Cup year.
“I mean, this is pretty concerning. So they’re going to need to find a way to either get around the fact that they’re very reliant on those players or buy players who they actually trust to fill in for them.
“And if they don’t do that, then they’re going to have exactly the same issue at some point in the next couple of seasons. But with their full-backs and in the case of the full-backs, I think that the system can’t cover for them in quite the same way.”
TIF Thoughts on Van Straaten’s comments…
He makes a really interesting and relevant point in stating the players will experience two busy seasons as a result of the international football tournaments scheduled to take place over the next two years in the Euros and World Cup.
Alexander-Arnold has already suffered a season in which he has not quite lived up to the same standards set by himself in the 2019/20 campaign which can be seen through his exclusion from the latest England squad.
Liverpool have failed in their attempts to defend their Premier League crown this term and some have viewed their injury issues at centre-back as one of the reasons behind that, and Van Straaten clearly believes there is the potential for the same to happen at full-back.
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