Liverpool May Lack Five First-Teamers at Selhurst Park
Liverpool visit Crystal Palace on Sunday (2pm kick-off) with up to five first-team players unavailable, three of them long-term cases and two shorter-term worries. A win would put the Reds in the top five by the end of the weekend.
Bradley, Ekitike and Leoni: no quick fixes
Conor Bradley has no return date at all. The right-back tore his ACL at Arsenal in January. That is a ligament deep inside the knee, and recovering from it is slow. As with Ekitike and Leoni, the club will not hurry him. On September 14 Iraola said Bradley was training alone and had only started touching the ball.
Hugo Ekitike has been out since April, when he ruptured his Achilles tendon against his former club Paris Saint-Germain. L'Equipe reports that the striker's work behind the scenes could return him to training this month. Boxing Day is believed to be his long-term target. For an injury this serious, that would be a quick comeback. It points to the trip to Hull City on December 26.
Iraola last spoke about him in September. He called it a long-term injury with a big part of the rehab still to come.
Giovanni Leoni's return has slipped. The £26m centre-back from Parma has not played since he suffered serious ACL damage on his debut, the Carabao Cup win over Southampton in September 2025. He was meant to rejoin first-team training in the break that has just ended. Iraola now expects it in the next one, so a month has been lost.
Iraola was not at the club when it happened. After speaking with the medical department, he said it "was not just an ACL – it was a bad injury". Several other parts of the knee were involved. He added that the rehab has to be very careful, so that Leoni stays in a good place once he is back in the team. The next listed date is Bournemouth at home on December 16.
Gravenberch and Frimpong
Ryan Gravenberch is the live question for Palace. A heel injury kept him out of the midweek Champions League defeat at Fenerbahce, and the Netherlands have left him out of their squad for the Nations League ties with Greece and Germany. Iraola called it a day-to-day call: "It's a matter of pain." Whether the midfielder can cope with that pain decides if he plays. If not, Manchester United at home on November 22 is the listed return.
Jeremie Frimpong is also missing from the Dutch squad. He picked up a new muscle injury in the 2-1 win at Brentford on October 17, early in his time on the pitch. Iraola said then that the right-back would be out for a while. Two days later he called it difficult to predict and said the club would have to wait until he recovers, and that being back before the November break would be difficult. No return date has been given.
Source: Liverpool Echo