Liverpool have been dealt yet another injury blow with luckless midfielder Thiago Alcantara after he was forced off with a suspected hamstring injury in Saturday's Premier League draw with Fulham.
The Spaniard started alongside Fabinho and Jordan Henderson in the engine room at Craven Cottage, but Liverpool were bullied by Marco Silva's side in the opening exchanges.
The Reds headed into the interval 1-0 down thanks to Aleksandar Mitrovic's header, but Jurgen Klopp elected to make no changes at the break as Liverpool sought to turn the game around.
With 51 minutes on the clock, though, Thiago was pictured clutching his hamstring, and the 31-year-old limped off the field to be replaced by Harvey Elliott.
Darwin Nunez and Mohamed Salah ultimately rescued a draw for Liverpool after Mitrovic had doubled his tally from the penalty spot, but Klopp did not have any good news to share on Thiago's condition after the game.
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Speaking to the media in his post-game press conference, Klopp said: "It looks like a bad hamstring. Of course, that is not good and we will see."
Thiago's apparent hamstring issue is the latest in a long line of niggling injuries for the ex-Bayern Munich man at Anfield, and he joins Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Curtis Jones in the treatment room.
Oxlade-Chamberlain will be out for the long term with his own hamstring problem, and Klopp has not been able to put a timeframe on Jones's recovery - Naby Keita was also absent from the opening-day draw due to illness.
Klopp was inevitably asked about the prospect of Liverpool signing a new midfielder after Thiago came off the pitch, but the German boss has insisted that he will not press the panic button and dip into the transfer market for a short-term option.
"I know what will now come up, it's clear. We said we don't need a midfielder because we have enough - and we actually have enough, but the problem now is we get punished for something that is not our responsibility really because things like this can happen, " liverpoolfc.com quotes Klopp as saying.
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"Nobody could image that Curtis gets the thing he gets; it is nothing serious but he is a young boy and it is a kind of stress reaction. Bodies are like this. Naby is only ill and he will now be back definitely next week again.
"Look, a transfer must make sense now and in the long-term; we have midfielders, we have still enough midfielders. It is not that we lack midfielders, but it's just some of them are injured.
"This is not a good situation, I don't like it at all, but we have to see how we react on that - but for sure not panicking."
Diogo Jota, Caoimhin Kelleher, Kostas Tsimikas and Ibrahima Konate are also confined to the Liverpool treatment room at present, and the Reds will aim to pick up their first win of the league season at the second attempt against Crystal Palace on August 15.
Ben Knapton
