Diogo Jota has returned to England on crutches as it has emerged the Liverpool star's injury was worse than first feared.
The 25-year-old was brought off at half-time during the Reds' 2-0 victory over Inter Milan in the Champions League on Wednesday, leaving him wearing a protective boot as he left the San Siro.
Jota now faces a period on the sidelines at a crunch point in Liverpool's season, with a Reddit post showing him on crutches after coming home from Italy.
The Reds play Chelsea in the Carabao Cup final next Sunday, following Premier League matches against Leeds and Norwich at Anfield, as they bid to keep pace with leaders Manchester City.
Manager Jurgen Klopp had initially claimed that the winger's injury "didn't seem serious," but it appears his verdict was premature.
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"Diogo had to go off with something around the ankle ligament. We will see, we don't know exactly," the German revealed in his post-match news conference.
"He could have played on, maybe that's a good sign, but at half-time, the ankle was swollen anyway so we knew we had to change."
But Klopp has plenty of reinforcements at his disposal, with the £50million January signing of Luis Diaz proving a timely piece of business ahead of the final and round-of-16 second leg.
"Luis is so natural when he comes on so that is all very helpful," the Liverpool manager said. " Roberto Firmino needed time to get in the game because he got the balls in the most difficult areas.
"After he scored the goal you could see the confidence back and all of a sudden the ball was our friend again.
"After the game I couldn't care less but in the game we didn't finish situations often enough. Very often, their situations were offside. This really kills me. You can see it is offside but they let it run and then forget to raise the flag."
Klopp not only praised his attackers, though, as the Reds boss affirmed that he was "absolutely" impressed by their defensive display.
"We defended really well, the way you have to defend – we like to win the ball early but if that is not possible," he added.
"And against them it is really not possible because they make the pitch really big, the three centre-backs, they pass a lot of back passes to them and then from there they go diagonal to either [Denzel] Dumfries or [Ivan] Perisic.
"That makes it really tricky, so you have to defend with passion; organisation helps as well but with passion and I thought defensively it was a really strong performance.
"But it would be silly if we wouldn't defend well because it means a lot to us this competition and these games, so we invested a lot and it's good."
