Florian Wirtz set to miss ANOTHER Liverpool game as Arne Slot gives update on injured German star

Wirtz has enjoyed a stronger second half to the season after a difficult start to his Liverpool career. He bagged four goals and two assists during a six-game stretch in all competitions in January, but he was forced to pull out of the team that would beat Nottingham Forest last week after getting injured during the pre-match warm-up.

Slot confirmed the 22-year-old would miss the clash with West Ham, with the Reds suffering a couple of scares before they eventually powered their way to a 5-2 victory on Merseyside. Hugo Ekitike, Virgil van Dijk and Alexis Mac Allister scored to make it 3-0 before half-time, though Tomas Soucek reduced the deficit for the Hammers shortly after the break.

Cody Gakpo and Valentin Castellanos then netted before an own goal from Axel Disasi wrapped up the win for Slot's team.

Wirtz was absent from Saturday's squad and Slot has now revealed he's unlikely to recover in time for the next game, which comes against Wolves on Tuesday during the upcoming midweek round of Premier League games.

He said: "I think that will be too early, but I said last week I didn’t expect him not to be available for today, so sometimes with an injury things can develop in a positive way or in a negative way. Now we are thinking it doesn’t have to take too long, but Tuesday will probably be too early. The week after will be tight as things stand now, but as I said, I thought that he would be available for today as well, which didn’t happen unfortunately."

Liverpool's first three goals on Saturday all came as a result of corner routines, which Slot admitted pleased him, having previously bemoaned his side's weaknesses when defending dead-ball situations.

He added: "That’s very pleasing. First of all, because that’s the reason why we won [and] second of all, because when I was just standing around your colleagues people said, ‘Well played, well played,’ and I said, ‘In my opinion, we’ve played better this season.’ We played OK to good – so, we were OK to good but it wasn’t the best game of the season. We’ve played better when we’ve lost [and] we’ve played better when we conceded set-pieces.

"But as I always said, things went back to normal. We created quite a lot of chances from set-pieces in the first part of the season and almost every set-piece we conceded went in, and today you could see exactly the opposite happening. I think one of their first big chances was a set-piece that would have gone in in the first six or seven months [of the season], 100 per cent sure. But now we did it and we start scoring from set-pieces and then things look much brighter and better than when you don’t, and that’s really pleasing for us, for the team and for our fans as well."

Liverpool will have high hopes of winning at bottom-placed Wolves on Tuesday, even if the Wanderers secured their second league win of the season against Aston Villa on Friday night. After that, the Reds make another trip to Molineux, this time in the FA Cup fifth round, before facing Galatasaray twice over two legs in the Champions League last 16 either side of a match against Tottenham Hotspur.