Liverpool should shelve plans to sell centre-back Nat Phillips following injury to Virgil van Dijk today.
As per The Athletic, Van Dijk is set to see a specialist to determine the extent of his hamstring injury. Bad news for Liverpool following Monday night’s shambolic defeat to Brentford.
Although Virgil hasn’t been at his best of late, he’s obviously still a key player for Jurgen Klopp.
In his place, we’ll see two of three from Joel Matip, Ibrahima Konate and Joe Gomez. But with the injury history of all three in mind, it may be the case that Phillips now picks up some game time, too.
Phillips still hanging on in at Liverpool
Nat Phillips, welcome to your very own Groundhog Day. Every time a transfer window comes around, there seems to be a supernatural force preventing the 25-year-old from leaving Anfield.
As per the Liverpool Echo in December, Klopp was finally ready to allow the defender to leave this month.
It was claimed that should a fee of around £10m arrive, Phillips would end his seven-year stay at the club.
Perhaps Liverpool will still stick to this. Klopp has recently gone on record once again to say that the Reds need to accumulate some cash in order to bring in any more signings.
With a midfielder still very much a priority during the winter window, maybe Phillips could be sacrificed.
But with Van Dijk now set to be missing, that seems unlikely. Big Nat has only played six times this season, but Liverpool surely won’t leave themselves with only three fit centre-backs for the next few crucial weeks.
Ironically, that’s the exact scenario that led to Phillips establishing himself in the Liverpool first team in 2020/21. Unfortunately for him, you’d hope that Klopp has now learnt from the mistakes made two years ago.
So, as a result, we expect the Liverpool manager to make yet another U-turn on what to do with Phillips. An exit has always felt inevitable, but he should be here for another six months at least. Keep hanging in there, Nat.
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