Andoni Iraola admits Jeremy Jacquet's long-term injury led to him being left out of Liverpool's squad on Saturday with the Reds prepared to "take it easy with him". The French defender was signed in January for £55million from Rennes, but allowed to play out the season with the Ligue 1 club. He's since made the move to Anfield but did so off the back of a lengthy spell on the sidelines.
The 21-year-old was forced to miss the final few months of last season after picking up a shoulder injury. Given that he have surgery on the issue, his last game came all the way back on February 7. As a result Liverpool are taking a cautious approach to bringing him back into the fold and he was left out of the team that beat Sunderland 4-2 in Nashville.
Iraola explained to LFCTV :
“With Jeremy, we decided to take it easy with him.”
“He has been a lot of months without playing with a shoulder injury. So, I think we are going to take it easy with him. He will play probably the last game of this US tour and he will have time to have minutes. It's true that we were kind of happy but we've lost one now.”
Iraola was referring to the injury sustained by Joe Gomez, who failed to complete ten minutes during Liverpool's clash on Saturday. There is no diagnosis on his injury but the defender has been plagued by injuries for years and could further test the team's backline depth.
“Probably the worst news has been straight away the injury of Joe,” said Iraola.
“We were happy because we were going through training without losing any players and unluckily for us we've lost Joe straight away.”
Liverpool have seen Ibrahima Konate depart for Real Madrid after his contract expired whilst Giovanni Leoni is still getting back to 100 percent after rupturing his ACL last September. Virgil van Dijk has just turned 35 and will see his contract expire in the summer.
Jacquet is highly rated and was tipped to move to Chelsea, who had chased him throughout January, before Liverpool swooped in to complete a deal. He's relatively inexperienced but is likely to play a big role with Liverpool's resources already being tested in pre-season.
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