Federico Chiesa will not be in the Liverpool squad at Brighton on Wednesday night, with Arne Slot suggesting the winger could be facing a longer layoff.
Chiesa has not featured in other a month having suffered with a lack of fitness after his first start for Liverpool in the Carabao Cup win over West Ham.
The Italian was an unused substitute in the following game but has now missed the last five, with Slot giving an update on his fitness on Tuesday.
“Federico, I’m not expecting him to be in the squad tomorrow,” he told reporters ahead of Liverpool’s trip to Brighton in the Carabao Cup.
“How long? That’s always difficult to say, because he goes a bit up and down.
“Sometimes he’s there with us, trains a few days, and then goes out for injury again.
“I don’t want to put days or weeks on it, because I think we just have to make sure he gets in the best possible shape.
“I don’t want to put any pressure on him by coming up with dates.”
Last time out, Slot suggested Chiesa could rejoin team training ahead of the 2-2 draw with Arsenal, but that clearly did not pan out as hoped.
The winger’s struggle so far has led to rumours in his native Italy over a loan back to Serie A in January in order to rebuild his fitness.
Slot quashed such speculation, responding: “That hasn’t gone through my mind at all.
“I think the first and foremost is he gets fit again and then we can see where he is.
“I think there were also reports in Italy [on what I said], what I meant about him was that he missed pre-season and in pre-season that he was on low-intensity sessions, because he had to train with three or four players apart from the group.
“Then going from there to a high-intensity league, to a high-intensity playing style, is difficult in general for every player, but especially if you have a pre-season like this.
“We knew this before, so we knew we had to be really careful to adjust where we could to his individual needs.
“But it hasn’t been perfect yet, so we’re trying to find the right way of building him up without overloading him.
“That has been difficult until now, but I have full confidence that will happen. Let’s let him first be fit.”
Slot also revealed that neither Diogo Jota (rib) or Harvey Elliott (foot) are expected back until after the November international break, though Conor Bradley is back in contention.
