FIVE key Liverpool players ABSENT before RB Leipzig clash

Liverpool will be without some important stars when they travel to eastern Germany to face RB Leipzig in the UEFA Champions League on Wednesday night.

As expected, Harvey Elliott and Alisson were absent from the final training session today. Elliott was targeting a return around this time given a foot fracture while in the England Under-21 setup during the September international break. Alisson, meanwhile, is expected to be out for up to six weeks, following a hamstring issue suffered against Crystal Palace.

Liverpool could now miss Diogo Jota too after the forward also missed training. Jota had to be substituted off after just half an hour during Sunday’s game against Chelsea, with head coach Arne Slot saying he wasn’t sure what the problem was in his post-match press conference.

Slot also mentioned that he would be surprised if Jota could make the trip, which opens the door to give out-of-form Darwin Nuñez another start.

Also absent from training was summer signing Federico Chiesa, who has missed every game since he was last seen on the bench for the 2-1 win at Wolves at the end of September.

The injury to the Italian winger remains unspecified but it clearly seems to be serious, given he has now been out of action for almost a month.

This limits what Liverpool can do to replace Jota too - any ideas of moving Salah into the centre become more difficult when Chiesa and Elliott are both unavailable to deputise for the Egyptian on the right wing.

Bradley joins absentees list

An additional absence is Conor Bradley, whose omission from the squad on Sunday came as a bit of a surprise given his strong performances over the international break when captaining Northern Ireland.

Slot didn’t say too much at all about Bradley after the game, just saying that the right-back was “not in”. It remains to be seen how significant that is for the youngster.

On a positive note, Alexis Mac Allister was training fully with the squad after only being on the bench for the Chelsea game, due to his illness on returning from international duty with Argentina. Curtis Jones performed spectacularly in his place on the pitch, giving Slot a big decision to make over the midfield to face RB Leipzig.

Wednesday's game will be a return to their former club for both Ibrahima Konate and Dominik Szoboszlai, who made 95 and 91 appearances respectively for the hosts.

Konate joined Liverpool from RB Leipzig in 2021, before Szoboszlai made the same move to Merseyside in the summer of 2023.