Jurgen Klopp reveals gruesome extent of Alexis Mac Allister injury

Jurgen Klopp admitted he's never seen the type of knee injury suffered by Alexis Mac Allister in Liverpool's recent win over Sheffield United.

The Argentine World Cup winner sustained a gash to his knee at Bramall Lane and missed the late comeback win over Crystal Palace on Saturday. Mac Allister has also not travelled to Belgium for Liverpool's final Europa League group stage game against Union Saint-Gilloise and is unlikely to face rivals Manchester United on Sunday.

"It's a bit more tricky than we thought at the first moment," Klopp told reporters of Mac Allister's issue. "The other boy stepped on his knee and the stud went through pretty much the muscle on to the bone.

"Now, we have to wait until the bone is healed and until Macca can deal with the pain, because it is pretty painful. Macca is actually a super-tough guy so we have probably to make sure just from an infection point of view nothing happens. That's really important.

"I never had this injury for one of my players before but now we have it.

Klopp added: "I hope it will not take that long, I would like to say it's day by day - but that would look like he could maybe play the next game but he will not be ready for that as well.

"I hope the next three or four days he makes big steps and then we will see."

Liverpool's place in the knockout stages of the Europa League is already secure - they've won four of their five group games to top Group E - and Klopp admitted that the game against Union Saint-Gilloise is the perfect opportunity to blend experience with youth.

"The line-up in my mind and the line-up we used in training would mean we have a good mix between experience and youth. We want to go for it, that's it," the German remarked. "We have a really good group of young boys [in the under-23s] and some of then we shall see tomorrow, that's clear."

READ THE LATEST LIVERPOOL NEWS, TRANSFER RUMOURS & GOSSIP