Liverpool have been left sweating on another worrying injury blow sustained by Andy Robertson on international duty.
The Reds’ influential left-back started for Scotland for the second straight friendly against Northern Ireland in Glasgow on Tuesday night, but appeared to suffer an ankle injury after a heavy challenge from Sunderland’s Trai Hume.
A frustrated Robertson was clearly in some pain and covered his shirt with his face before limping off to be replaced by Bologna midfielder Lewis Ferguson with 37 minutes on the clock at Hampden Park, where worrying Scottish preparations for Euro 2024 hit another low after Friday’s 4-0 thrashing by the Netherlands in Amsterdam as they fell to a 1-0 defeat courtesy of a first-half winner - his first senior international goal - from Robertson’s Liverpool team-mate Conor Bradley that followed an error by Everton’s Nathan Patterson.
It was a sense of unwelcome Deja vu for Robertson, who needed surgery on a shoulder injury suffered in Scotland’s meeting with Spain in Seville back in October and ended up being sidelined for more than three months.
Jurgen Klopp will be desperately hoping that the 30-year-old has avoided another serious issue on Tuesday, with title-chasing Liverpool already missing several key players including Trent Alexander-Arnold, Alisson Becker, Darwin Nunez and Diogo Jota as they prepare to return to Premier League action against Brighton at Anfield on Sunday.
"Well, obviously he's come off,” Scotland boss Steve Clarke said on Robertson. “He's got an injury. We'll assess and he will go back to his club. They'll assess him and and hopefully it's not not too long.”
Tuesday’s result means that Scotland have now gone seven matches without a win in total with the European Championship looming large in Germany this summer, having not triumphed since their 3-0 qualifying victory away in Cyprus in September.
Scotland are scheduled to play Gibraltar and Finland in final warm-up friendlies before beginning their Euros campaign on opening night against hosts Germany in Munich on June 14, also facing Switzerland and Hungary in Group A.
There were loud boos from frustrated home fans at Hampden, though Clarke insists his side will be ready for their second straight appearance at the European Championship finals.
"I'm not counting," said Clarke of the run of winless matches. “We are going to be ready in June and that is the most important thing. The performance was okay, we wanted to win the game.
"Credit to Northern Ireland, I thought they were excellent, good shape, discipline, defended with their lives. We had 14 shots blocked, that is good defending.
"They had two chances and scored with one of them. They got the goal with the deflection, we didn't find enough to get the goal to equalise or go on to win the game.
"We had a lot of the game. We tried our best to open them up. It was difficult to find space.
"It was a totally different game to what we have played recently, we were playing against the top teams and they open the pitch and you saw on Friday night that we manged to create a number of really good chances.
"Tonight when we needed a little bit of craft or guile towards the last third of the pitch we couldn't find that and that is basically why we lose the game.
"We had more than the lion's share of possession, 14 shots, but not one good enough to go into the back of the net.
"It's probably fair to say we're not very good at friendlies because we don't win too many of them.
"Let's hope when we come to the competitive games in June we are ready to go. I'm sure we will be.
"The biggest thing for us is to be ready for June. I'm a little bit late into the press conference. I would rather be sitting here in my position.
"Unfortunately Wales have just been knocked out on penalty kicks. It's not all doom and gloom."
