Liverpool have been handed an untimely concern with the fitness of Virgil van Dijk ahead of Sunday's Premier League clash with Tottenham Hotspur at Anfield.
On the back of winning just one of their last five games in the top flight, Jurgen Klopp's side must triumph against the Lilywhites if they are to retain their faint hopes of winning the title.
Should Arsenal win on Saturday lunchtime against Bournemouth and the Reds then suffer defeat to Ange Postecoglou's side, they will officially be out of the reckoning for first place with two games to go.
Even victory on Sunday will not be enough if Manchester City go on to win their match in hand, and September's showdown with Spurs saw Liverpool suffer a narrow defeat, albeit in unjust circumstances as Luis Diaz had a goal wrongly disallowed.
The Reds are already guaranteed to be without Joel Matip (knee), Ben Doak (knee), Thiago Alcantara (hip) and Diogo Jota (hip) this weekend, and Klopp delivered a worrying update on his captain in Friday's press conference.
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Van Dijk to be assessed ahead of Tottenham clash
The Liverpool boss revealed to reporters that the Netherlands international had not trained fully for the entire week and may only be able to parts of team practice on Friday, plunging his availability for this weekend into doubt.
However, Conor Bradley has returned to full training following an ankle injury and is expected to be available, with Klopp saying: "Diogo is not in team training yet. Conor is.
"Virgil wasn't the whole week yet, probably part of parts of team training today. So we have to see what we can do there. That's it."
Should Van Dijk fail a late fitness test, Ibrahima Konate and Jarell Quansah would likely be the central pairing selected by Klopp, who was also pressed on his recent touchline argument with Mohamed Salah.
The long-serving Reds pair engaged in a war of words before Klopp sent Salah on in the second half of last weekend's 2-2 draw with West Ham United, forcing fellow substitutes Joe Gomez and Darwin Nunez to step in and calm the pair down.
Klopp insists Salah row is "completely resolved"
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Klopp played down the exchange at full time, but Salah said that there would be "fire" if he spoke of the incident as he made his way through the mixed zone and declined interview requests.
The Reds boss reiterated on Friday that the row was now just water under the bridge, saying that he and Salah possess too much respect for one another to hold a grudge.
"Completely resolved. It's no problem. If we didn't know each other for so long I'm not sure how we would deal with it but we know each other for that long and respect each other too much," Klopp added.
"It's really no problem so we can deal with these kind of things completely independent of any expectations from the outside. We are absolutely fine with it but in general the best situation would be, everybody in the best possible place, we win the game, score lots of goals and yes the situation probably would not have been like that. It all depends on each other."
Salah is expected to be reinstated to the first XI against a Tottenham side who have no fit left-backs, so either Emerson Royal or Micky van de Ven should be squaring up to the Egyptian on Sunday.
Ben Knapton
