Liverpool duo Diogo Jota and Curtis Jones leave in protective gear, but Jurgen Klopp has positive update on Darwin Nunez injury

Jurgen Klopp focused on the positives after Liverpool's comfortable win over Brentford, despite suffering three further injury blows in a disastrous first half in west London.

The Reds were boosted by the return of Mohamed Salahwho scored a goal and assisted in the 4-1 victory, and his return is timely for the Reds who had both Diogo Jota and Curtis Jones leave the stadium on crutches and protective equipment after a nightmare first 45 minutes.

Jones went down for the first time holding his leg with just 20 minutes played at the Gtech Community Stadium on Saturday afternoon, and Jota left the field on a stretcher ten minutes later after a horror incident.

Brentford's Christian Norgaard jumped into the air to challenge for the ball, but Jota felt the full force of the impact as the Bees man landed squarely on the knee of the in-form Liverpool star.

Klopp was seen watching in disbelief as two more key players were added to his injury list, and things only got worse when opening goalscorer Darwin Nunez was substituted at half-time, raising fresh injury fears for the striker ahead of the match. . Carabao Cup final against Chelsea.

While Jota and Jones could spend long periods on the sidelines after being seen leaving the stadium with the help of crutches and wearing a protective boot (Jones) and a knee pad (Jota), Klopp at least had some more positive news about Nunez.

When asked after the match if he had any updates on the trio's fitness, the Liverpool The boss told talkSPORT: “Not really.

“Yes, Jots looks like something with the knee, but we don't know the extent of it yet, of course not.

“Curtis took a hit to the lower part of the shin and it could be a lot, it could be nothing, we have to see. Further evaluations are not yet possible.

“Darwin mentioned that he feels the muscle slightly. He's not bad, but he's a little bad, so we replaced him just as a precaution. We have enough problems already so we don't want to put pressure on him.

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“That's it, that's the negative part of this day.”

Injuries to the three players would take Liverpool's injury list to ten players, with Klopp already without goalkeeper Alisson, vice-captain Trent Alexander-Arnold, midfield trio Dominik Szoboszlai, Thiago Alcantara and Stefan Bajcetic, centre-back Joel Matip and young Ben Doak. for the trip to London.

But despite their injury nightmare, Klopp was delighted with the resilience and performance of his team, who swept Brentford thanks to goals from Nunez, Alexis Mac Allister, Salah and Cody Gakpo.

“Obviously the positive was the game, the boys played an incredible game of football against an incredibly difficult opponent,” added the coach.

“I liked it a lot, we scored wonderful goals and we could have scored more. The way we approached set pieces was exceptional, and Caoimhin (Kelleher) put in a super goalkeeping performance, he was outstanding.

“The defense in general was very good, with the ball we were calm and direct at the right moment, we surpassed them and entered the area. It was definitely one of our best games today and I'm very happy about that.”

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Asked again about his growing injury crisis, Klopp said: “But that's our life.

“It's a lot of frustrations, but I don't remember it ever being easy since I've been here, so in some ways this is the Liverpool way: we have to do it on a bit of a bumpy road, but that's the way it is.” , but we take it and continue until someone whistles the game or we no longer have 11 players. It's always: 'Let's keep going.'

“Today was a top-notch team performance against a super tough opponent. It was our best performance in a long time. And that after yesterday our goalkeeper (Alisson) also left the field due to injury, but our 1-B version (Kelleher) came in and had an incredible game. “I’m so happy everyone can see how good it is.”