Poch has no option but to ask for Chelsea patience

Let’s switch to Liverpool and one of their longer-term absentees, Joel Matip.

The defender ruptured his ACL against Fulham last weekend, ending his season. The 32-year-old is also out of contract at the end of the season.

Liverpool will be relying on Virgil van Dijk, Ibrahima Konate, Joe Gomez and youngster Jarell Quansah in Matip’s absence.

Here’s what Jurgen Klopp had to say about signing a replacement in January, as well as Matip’s future:

💬 “I’m pretty sure the club will show their class. We have to make decisions together with Joel. He deserves all the support and he will get it.

“In eight years here, I just never understand this – you always talk about transfers as if they would be the easiest thing in the world. Tell me a club who wants to sell a top, top centre-half who could play for Liverpool?

“Why should we start that process? We’ve only known for a few days that Joel will be out for a long time, which is really bad for us. We still have four centre-halves which is absolutely alright.

“If we’d had a fifth one already in before that, then it would have been a completely different team dynamic. He wouldn’t have been involved and we wouldn’t have seen steps with him or him.

“It was perfect. Is it perfect now? I’d say as long as we can go with this four then yes. If not then it will be a bit more tricky with the amount of games coming up.”

Interesting quotes as always from Klopp – and we’ve got some lovely insight from our Liverpool correspondent James Pearce, who was at Klopp’s presser, on the way next.