Brendan Rodgers, the Liverpool manager, is concerned his side do not have the depth to deal with the Daniel Sturridge's lay-off after a shock 3-1 defeat at the hands of Hull City.
Rodgers confirmed that England striker Sturridge is facing up to two months on the sidelines following an ankle injury in training and his team-mates appeared to feel the loss sharply as they struggled to test their hosts.
Steven Gerrard found the net with a free-kick to cancel out Jake Livermore's opener, but a second-half strike from David Meyler and a Martin Skrtel own-goal did not flatter Hull, who were clearly superior after the interval.
As well as Sturridge's absence, Phillipe Coutinho was restricted to 25 minutes from the bench having suffered with an ankle problem of his own all week.
"The quality of our squad isn't big enough to cope with two big players like that missing. No doubt it was a disruption," Rodgers said.
"Daniel is out for up to eight weeks which is a big blow for us and Phillipe didn't train all week. It's difficult if you take those two out, they have been very efficient for us this season.
"This little period will test us now but players will come in and it's a great opportunity to a stake a claim. We have a very busy period coming up and we've got a squad that needs as many of its good players as possible. It's not ideal."
Closest now to leaders Arsenal are Chelsea, and manager Jose Mourinho was delighted with the response of his players to conceding after 13 seconds in the 3-1 defeat of Southampton which took his side within four points of the summit. After Jay Rodriguez's opening goal, Gary Cahill, John Terry and Demba Ba scored in the second half as Mourinho's unbeaten Premier League home record was extended to 67 games. "We deserved the three points in a match which was a must-win for us," said Mourinho. "We knew that three title contenders lost points before us, so it was important for us to win this game."
Samir Nasri struck twice in the second half as Manchester City overcame Swansea 3-0 for another ultimately comfortable home win.
Swansea had impressed after falling behind to an early Alvaro Negredo free-kick at the Etihad Stadium but Nasri's double killed off their spirited resistance.
Victory lifted City to third in the table and maintained their 100 per cent home record.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article