Jurgen Klopp has confirmed that Luis Diaz is set to return to Liverpool's squad for the trip to Leeds United on Monday night.
Diaz has not played since damaging knee ligaments in a 3-2 defeat at Arsenal last October. He was expected to be sidelined for three months but, during a winter training camp in Dubai, the Colombia international suffered a recurrence and was then ruled out for a further four months.
Reds boss Klopp has been anxious to get the 26-year-old back in the fold, but it now appears that the former Porto man is set to be back in his side's matchday squad for Monday’s trip to Elland Road after being back involved in full sessions with his team-mates this week.
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"Yeah, he’s 100 per cent ready in training so that’s it now," Klopp said when asked about Diaz. "He is now completely normal in training and now we have to reintegrate him.
"He will be in the squad, if nothing happens Luis will be in the squad and from there we go. That’s it."
The Colombia international has scored 10 goals in 38 games since arriving from Porto for a fee that could reach £50 million in January 2022. And Klopp believes the return of Diaz is like a new signing for his side.
He said: Yeah, absolutely it is [like having a new signing]. Luis, he developed massively. In that time his English is getting better, so he is really settled. He was here every day – how it is with injured players and especially long-term injured players, they are even more at the training ground than all the others, so every day together with therapists and stuff like this.
"He really matured again, he is much more comfortable than he was in the beginning with everything in a new country, so that’s really good and it will help him as well. So, we are really happy to have him back.
"He is like a breath of fresh air every day he is in training. He loves it out there, I said in the beginning when he came that he cannot train without a smile on his face and that’s something really special and that’s exactly how he acts now.
"But he was out for a long time, it was not his season so far. Last week we played against Arsenal, the game before against Arsenal, the away game, was the game he got injured so a long time ago.
"Then one session in Dubai, out again, and now being back – it’s really a long time. But it’s absolutely fine – he didn’t lose his skills, that’s good, but how I said we have to see how step by step we can bring him back into the team."
Speaking to preview his side’s trip to Yorkshire on Monday night, Klopp also revealed that Ibrahima Konate and Alisson Becker have both been absent from training this week, but the Reds boss didn’t confirm whether they would be unable to feature at Elland Road.
He said: "We don’t like too much to talk about these kind of things because then in the next moment you get a call that somebody is out.
"But we had a couple of problems this week: Ibou couldn’t train for two days, should be back today hopefully, Ali wasn’t involved for two days, will train today individually.
"So, a little bit illness here, a little bit knocks there. We had a few problems and hopefully will not get more, but if they are all in then I think we have five or six players not in the [matchday] squad. It’s a lot and they are all training well.
"It would be easy for me if somebody is not showing up then it’s a very easy decision, but there are no easy decisions for who stays at home and stuff like this. So that’s tough for a few boys but really good for us. We never had that and that’s positive."
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