Villarreal missing six players as Alex Ferguson Liverpool fear dismissed

Your Liverpool digest for Tuesday, May 3.

Liverpool's UEFA Champions League semi-final opponents Villarreal have a number of injury concerns ahead of Tuesday's second-leg tie.

The Reds head to Spain with a 2-0 lead and are seen as favourites to progress to the final where they will meet the winners of Real Madrid vs Man City.

Villarreal knocked out Bayern Munich in the quarter-finals and will be up for the fixture as they look to mount a major comeback. But they may have to do so without a number of key players. Monday morning's training session saw six players miss out, some due to long-term issues and others were unexplainable by their absence.

Liverpool's 1-0 win against an in-form Newcastle side was a great result. The only thing that concerned me was the team not being clinical again. You look at (Luis) Diaz, he had two chances, so did (Diogo) Jota and (Sadio) Mane and (Mohamed) Salah. We’ve only taken one of them. By doing that you always leave yourself susceptible to concede.

Other than that, I thought we were really good and if we had taken our chances then it could have been 4-0, easily. The competition for places now is so high. The players want to play in the Champions League final, if we get there, they want to play in the FA Cup final.

The lads that came in - they’re chomping at the bit. I thought they were brilliant. (James) Milner in particular and Joe Gomez. Naby Keita had a really good game also and that tells you about the strength of the squad, because there’s some much competition for places and they all want to be involved in these big games coming up. That played its part in the win.

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