Liverpool’s Andy Robertson faces three months out with shoulder injury

Liverpool are likely to lose Andy Robertson for three months after it was confirmed the defender needs surgery on the shoulder injury sustained on international duty.

Robertson damaged the shoulder in a collision with Spain’s goalkeeper Unai Simón during Scotland’s 2-0 defeat in Sevilla last Thursday. He returned to Liverpool this week to be assessed by a specialist, who confirmed the club’s fears that an operation was required. The 29-year-old left-back, a virtual ever-present for Jürgen Klopp’s team in recent years who has played every minute of his club’s eight league games so far this season, is not expected to return to competitive action until next year.

Klopp, the Liverpool manager, said: “I think the decision is we go towards surgery. There is a little chance we could try without but talking to pretty much all experts it looks like surgery will be the best thing, especially in the long term definitely, and that means he is out for a while.

“I don’t know exactly how long but it is shoulder surgery so not exactly an easy one. In my experience you can train pretty quickly again but not football-specific because you have to be careful of challenges and all these kind of things. He will be out for a while.”

Robertson’s surgery is scheduled to take place next week. Liverpool will discover the full extent of the problem and gain a clearer idea of the full-back’s recovery time after the operation. The Scotland captain has recovered quickly from previous injuries but Klopp confirmed a three-month absence appeared likely.

“In my experience, you only see the real extent of the injury when they look in it, properly open it and fix it, but around three months,” he said. “I’ve not seen a lot of times that it’s earlier but Robbo is a quick healer. But we have to make sure the structure is correct before he starts all the normal stuff again.”