{"id":281774,"date":"2026-01-13T06:18:19","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T06:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/281774\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T06:18:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T06:18:19","slug":"conor-bradley-to-miss-northern-irelands-world-cup-playoffs-and-rest-of-season-with-knee-injury-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/281774\/","title":{"rendered":"Conor Bradley to miss Northern Ireland\u2019s World Cup playoffs and rest of season with knee injury \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Conor Bradley<\/a> has sustained a serious knee injury and will be out for the remainder of the season.<\/p>\n

The Liverpool<\/a> right-back suffered the issue in the latter stages of Thursday night\u2019s Premier League fixture away at Arsenal.<\/p>\n

Bradley will undergo surgery in the coming days and then begin a period of rehabilitation at the AXA Training Centre, the club said. Bradley has not sustained an ACL injury but there is damage to the bone and ligaments in the 22-year-old\u2019s left knee.<\/p>\n

No timeframe is being placed on his return to playing at this stage of the process, but he is expected to miss the rest of the season.<\/p>\n

It is a significant blow to Liverpool and Northern Ireland, who play Italy in a World Cup playoff on March 26th for the chance to qualify for the tournament North America this summer.<\/p>\n

This is the latest injury setback Bradley has suffered since making his debut for\u00a0Liverpool\u00a0in September 2021 and one that will be remembered for Gabriel Martinelli\u2019s reaction to the player as he lay stricken on the turf at the Emirates Stadium. Having dropped the ball on Bradley, Martinelli then tried to aggressively push him off the pitch, leading to angry reactions from Bradley\u2019s teammates. Arsenal\u2019s Brazilian winger subsequently apologised for his actions.<\/p>\n

\"PlayersPlayers react to Arsenal’s Gabriel Martinelli after he moved Liverpool’s Conor Bradley (not pictured) off the pitch. Photograph: John Walton\/PA <\/p>\n

It leaves head coach Arne Slot with Jeremie Frimpong, who has had his own injury problems since joining from Bayer Leverkusen in the summer, and Joe Gomez, himself only just returning from a hamstring issue, as cover but neither can be considered a genuine right-back.<\/p>\n

Slot has had to utilise midfielders Dominik Szoboszlai and Curtis Jones in the position this season.<\/p>\n

It comes as Slot has promised not to repeat last season\u2019s FA Cup gamble against Plymouth when Liverpool entertain Barnsley in the third round on Monday.<\/p>\n

Slot changed all 10 outfield players for the fourth-round tie at Home Park and was punished as Plymouth, then bottom of the Championship, produced a huge shock to win 1-0. He compounded his selection risk with an inexperienced bench that included only two senior players; Curtis Jones and Darwin N\u00fa\u00f1ez.<\/p>\n

Slot stands by his decision on the basis Liverpool were challenging for four trophies at the time. But with his team out of the Carabao Cup and a distant fourth in the Premier League this season, that pressure no longer applies.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast season I made the decision that some players needed to rest in the FA Cup because you cannot play every player every single time,\u201d Slot said. \u201cBut it\u2019s obvious that we\u2019re not in the League Cup anymore and the FA Cup has always been very important for us, but sometimes in a season where you are still competing for the League Cup, for the Champions League and the league, with the amount of players we had last season and have this season, you have to make choices.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I can guarantee you that on Monday you will see all the players you saw against Arsenal, maybe with some substitutions, but then they will be on the bench. So that\u2019s going to be different than last season against Plymouth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slot also made 10 changes for this season\u2019s Carabao Cup exit against Crystal Palace and he claims Liverpool\u2019s squad, already stretched before Bradley\u2019s confirmed long-term absence, could have suffered more problems had he not rested senior players that night.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all know in cup competitions things can happen, but you cannot compare Plymouth away with the players we played back then to Barnsley at home,\u201d said the head coach. \u201cI was just informed the last time Barnsley played against us they beat us in 2008 in our stadium. We take them very seriously. As we took Plymouth as well, and people would argue that if they look at the lineup.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut then I again have to tell them why we did this, and why did we play the League Cup against Crystal Palace with the players we\u2019ve played. That is because if we had played Virgil [van Dijk] and these players again maybe I would have missed out on them against Arsenal as well.\u201d – Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Conor Bradley has sustained a serious knee injury and will be out for the remainder of the season.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,44887,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,560,15,16,5,141992,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-281774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-conor-bradley","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latestnews","19":"tag-liverpool-fc","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-northern-ireland-football-team","24":"tag-top-stories","25":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115886339080844184","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}