Jurgen Klopp has just shown who he thinks are his four most important players at Liverpool

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Liverpool’s squad for tonight’s Europa League clash with Union Saint-Gilloise may have been a surprise to some.

With Liverpool already qualified for the last-16, plenty will have expected Jurgen Klopp to ‘play the kids‘ over in Belgium.

Indeed, the Reds do have much bigger fish to fry. Sunday marks the start of a busy week at Anfield, with Manchester United, West Ham and Arsenal all visiting the famous ground within six days. As a result, no risks need be taken for this evening’s game.

Nevertheless, Klopp has named a decidedly stronger 23-man squad than fans may have predicted.

There is of course a sprinkling of youngsters in there, and it will be interesting to see if the likes of Dominik Szoboszlai, Darwin Nunez and Ibrahima Konate play. Chances are that they won’t.

But despite the inclusion of some big names, there were some even bigger ones who were left out of the squad entirely. None of Alisson Becker, Mohamed Salah, Trent Alexander-Arnold or Virgil van Dijk will travel to Belgium. Consequently, we think we can now deduce who Klopp sees as his most important players.

Klopp’s ‘untouchable’ quartet

Last month, Jamie Carragher called this absolutely perfectly. The former Reds defender named this very quartet as a group of ‘untouchable’ players at Liverpool.

As the Reds’ squad has evolved over recent years, these four – along with Andy Robertson – are the group who have remained constant.

There are other players still at the club who were in the 23-man matchday squad for the 2019 Champions League final. But Caoimhin Kelleher and Joe Gomez are not regular starters, while Joel Matip quite isn’t in the same bracket either. To a man, these five are already true legends of the club.

Obviously, Robertson is injured at the moment and therefore cannot confirm his place in Klopp’s ‘untouchables’ here. But it feels likely that the Scotland captain would have been left at home for this one, too.

From our point of view, we’d have probably added Szoboszlai to this no-fly list as well.

Clearly, the Hungarian holds nothing like the status of the four left out, but in terms of Liverpool’s current situation, he’s a key man.

Having played a lot of football recently, it would have felt appropriate to hold Szoboszlai back. With Alexis Mac Allister’s injury in mind, the Reds can’t afford for anything to happen to their No.8. Hopefully it’s nothing but a watching brief for him tonight.

It remains to be seen what Klopp’s untouchable four do with their night off this evening. As captain, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Van Dijk in particular travel out. But whatever they do, they can do it in the knowledge that their status at this football club couldn’t be higher right now.