Jurgen Klopp admits 'false positives' led to postponement of Arsenal tie

Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp has confessed that the Covid-19 'outbreak' which led to the postponement of their Carabao Cup semi-final first leg against Arsenal was actually just one positive case.

The Reds were dealing with a handful of positive cases in the build-up to the game, with Alisson, Joel Matip and Roberto Firmino in isolation beforehand, while both Klopp and assistant Pep Lijnders were also absent after positive tests.

A whole new 'outbreak' was then detected and it was decided that the amount of players who had tested positive meant that Liverpool could not field a team for the semi-final, but Klopp has now confessed that only Trent Alexander-Arnold was actually confirmed to be positive.

"The situation is just like this," Klopp explained (via the Liverpool Echo). "We had what we thought last week was a proper outbreak and it showed up that we had a lot of false positive results actually.

"But the rules are like they are so all these players who are false positives couldn’t play today. Or we decided not to play them or whatever.

"Could we have played them? I don't know exactly but we had to make that decision.

"The only real extra positive from the team came from Trent Alexander-Arnold and all the rest were false positives, so it was a really tough week because the boys couldn’t train.

"We had to close the training ground because you have two extra testing grounds, so it's really difficult."

The postponement of the fixtures means that what was originally the second leg on Thursday will now be the first, with the new second leg at the Emirates Stadium coming on January 20.


Source : 90min