There was initial concern regarding Mac Allister\u2019s potential availability for Wednesday night\u2019s high-profile league phase opener at Anfield after he was substituted at half-time of Sunday\u2019s last-gasp Premier League win over Burnley.<\/p>\n
The Argentine international required lengthy treatment on the pitch following a heavy challenge by former Chelsea midfielder Lesley Ugochukwu, who was booked and later sent off following another foul on Florian Wirtz, initially playing on before making way for Conor Bradley at the break as Dominik Szoboszlai moved back into the middle.<\/p>\n
However, Liverpool boss Arne Slot looked to allay fears over Mac Allister following the dramatic victory at Turf Moor sealed by Mohamed Salah\u2019s 95th-minute penalty, explaining that he was not fully fit after missing a lot of pre-season with an injury sustained towards the end of last term and playing for Argentina during the recent international break.<\/p>\n
Reds fans will be relieved to learn that the World Cup winner took part in an open training session at Kirkby on Tuesday, where he was joined by Isak.<\/p>\n
The new \u00a3125million British record signing was omitted from the squad that travelled to Burnley having been deemed not ready by Slot, who is bringing Isak along slowly after he missed all of pre-season and the start of the new campaign as he tried to force an exit from Newcastle, where he was not training with the first-team squad.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Liverpool’s Alexander Isak (centre) during a training session<\/p>\n
Alexander Isak will have to \u2018build up gradually\u2019 with Liverpool \u2013 Arne Slot <\/p>\n
He said after the win at the weekend that Isak could possibly play at least 45 minutes against Atletico on Wednesday on what would be his debut, but warned that if he did that then it would not be repeated during Saturday\u2019s home Merseyside derby clash against Everton.<\/p>\n
Absent from Liverpool training on Tuesday was Curtis Jones, who looks set to remain sidelined with an unspecified knock suffered during the win over Arsenal before the international break that saw him play no part at Burnley.<\/p>\n
Jeremie Frimpong made a late return off the bench for Liverpool at the weekend after a hamstring issue, while Milos Kerkez\u2019s first-half substitution was not injury-related as he walked a disciplinary tightrope after being booked for simulation while trying to earn a penalty.<\/p>\n
Atletico are dealing with a number of injury problems ahead of their trip to Anfield, confirming earlier on Tuesday that none of Julian Alvarez, Johnny Cardoso, Thiago Almada, Jose Maria Gimenez or Alex Baena were travelling to Merseyside.<\/p>\n
Robin Le Normand and David Hancko are in Diego Simeone\u2019s squad, though, after both being forced off with knocks in Saturday\u2019s LaLiga win over Villarreal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There was initial concern regarding Mac Allister\u2019s potential availability for Wednesday night\u2019s high-profile league phase opener at Anfield…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[18,19,17,1534,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-67989","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-liverpool-football-club","12":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67989","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=67989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}