Liverpool sit serenely at the top of the Premier League despite enduring several injury concerns already this season, and while the treatment room at Anfield has nearly cleared, a problem of a different kind could soon be facing Arne Slot.
Alexis Mac Allister was suspended for the recent draw against Fulham after accruing five yellow cards in the top flight this term, and Dominik Szoboszlai will miss the trip to West Ham tomorrow evening for the same reason.
The Reds boss may therefore be sweating on five other players in his squad who face a ban if they go into the referee’s notebook against the Irons or Manchester United.
Those two fixtures will take Liverpool to 19 Premier League games for the season, prior to which point a tally of five yellow cards triggers a one-match ban. That suspension is doubled if a player is booked 10 times in the opening 32 matches, and accruing 15 yellows results in missing three games (Liverpool Echo).
Slot has four players on thin ice for the West Ham fixture, with Cody Gakpo, Darwin Nunez, Ryan Gravenberch and Ibrahima Konate all on four bookings for the campaign so far. The French defender will miss the game through injury, but a yellow card for any of the others would see them suspended for the Red Devils’ visit to Anfield on 5 January.
Trent Alexander-Arnold has been booked three times in the Premier League, so if he were to be cautioned in the next two games, he’d then face a one-match ban – likewise Konate if he were to return against Man United and go into the referee’s notebook.
Liverpool have been able to overcome the absences of several key players since the start of the campaign, but the last thing we need is to have their squad decimated for the early January showdown against our arch-rivals due to a spate of suspensions.
Szoboszlai will miss tomorrow’s match because of a harsh booking against Leicester on Boxing Day, and it’d be head-bangingly frustrating if Gakpo, Nunez or Gravenberch were to be shown an equally soft yellow card at the London Stadium and duly be ruled out of the Man United game.
Hopefully the Reds can come through the next two matches without any of the above names crossing the referee, with the amnesty kicking in after the fixture against Ruben Amorim’s side in eight days’ time.
If Liverpool find themselves with a comfortable lead against West Ham, don’t be surprised to see those in yellow card trouble called ashore so that they won’t miss the following Sunday’s match.
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