LIVERPOOL, England (AP) \u2014 Liverpool striker Alexander Isak will be laid up for two months with a broken ankle and fibula from a tackle that coach Arne Slot described as reckless on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Isak had surgery on Monday, two days after he was injured in the act of scoring the opening goal of a 2-1 win over Tottenham in the Premier League.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a long injury, for a couple of months,\u201d Slot said. \u201cIt\u2019s a big disappointment for him and, as a result, for us.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was, for me, a reckless challenge. I\u2019ve said a lot about the tackle of Xavi Simons (who was sent off for dragging his studs down the calf of Virgil van Dijk in the same game) which for me was completely unintentional.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think you will ever get an injury out of a tackle like that. But the tackle of (Micky) van de Ven (on Isak), if you make a tackle like that 10 times, 10 times there is a serious chance the player gets a serious injury.\u201d<\/p>\n
Van de Ven slid into Isak and trapped his shooting foot just after he\u2019d shot.<\/p>\n
TV analyst and Liverpool great Jamie Carragher defended Van de Ven.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot been made about a lot of the challenges in the game from Tottenham players and a lot of them weren\u2019t clever,\u201d Carragher told Sky Sports on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve put myself in Van de Ven\u2019s position and that\u2019s a challenge I\u2019d probably make. He\u2019s trying to block it, it\u2019s just the follow through. I don\u2019t know where else anyone thinks his foot\u2019s going to go. He has to make that challenge. You can\u2019t let the striker just get a shot away there in that situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just really bad luck for Isak. It\u2019s probably one of the first glimpses we\u2019ve seen of his real quality in a Liverpool shirt.\u201d<\/p>\n
Slot was doubly disappointed for Isak because the Sweden international was just getting up to speed.<\/p>\n
The $170 million British record signing didn\u2019t have a preseason because of his dispute with Newcastle then his fitness was set back by a groin injury in October.<\/p>\n
Liverpool was patiently building him up and he\u2019d started five of the last nine games but Slot, who expects Isak back before the end of the season, doesn\u2019t believe he\u2019ll be as sharp as he was last season for Newcastle.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a really challenging and difficult period for him. Usually when you join a new club \u2014 he was very excited as well \u2014 you want to show all the qualities you have but that was simply impossible,\u201d Slot said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe no one understands but if you haven\u2019t trained on a serious level for three or four months with the team and you are playing in this league you have to be on top of your game to impact a game of football.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat took months because there was no preseason, just games, games, games and hardly any time to train. We all knew it would take him time and that\u2019s why he is so unlucky he is now injured because we all saw with his goal against West Ham and with this goal (against Tottenham) he gets closer and closer to the player he was last season at Newcastle.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LIVERPOOL, England (AP) \u2014 Liverpool striker Alexander Isak will be laid up for two months with a broken…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-363837","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-soccer","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}