Today’s scintillating battle between Leeds and Liverpool was sullied by an awful injury to Liverpool youngster Harvey Elliott.
The 18 year old became the youngest player to start back-to-back league games for the Reds and was outstanding alongside Mohamed Salah and Trent Alexander-Arnold down the Liverpool right causing Leeds endless problems.
He was stretchered off after a tackle from Pascal Struijk who himself was on the field due to an injury to Diego Llorente earlier in the contest. The moment was symbolic of the game as Liverpool looked to get on the break after an end-to-end opening 50 minutes of the contest. In Struijk’s desperation, he dived to stop Elliott from breaking clear and in doing so he seriously injured the young midfielder and coped a red card much to the annoyance of many fans who believed the referee shouldn’t have even given a free kick nor did he intend to until the injury became clear.
A very emotional Jurgen Klopp responded to the injury after the game in an interview with Sky Sports addressing the severity of it and the tackle itself. He said: “It is a bad injury. It was ankle it’s dislocated, we could put it back. He’s now in hospital.
“He played an incredible game, he’s an incredible player. Now he’s out. Do I want such a young boy having this experience so early in his career? No. We’ll be there for him. We’ll play football without him but we’ll wait for him because obviously he’s a top top player.
“I saw the situation and saw immediately the effect. I saw his foot was not in the right place. That’s why we were shocked.
He then addressed his conversation with the referee immediately after the incident: “Nothing important. I’m not sure it’s the right moment to speak about these things. It was nothing important really.”
When talking about his conversation with the officials, Klopp struggled to speak as the emotion of the situation hit him. It was clearly very difficult for him and his team to deal with such a horrific injury.
