Liverpool’s thin squad has been handed a rare slice of good news: three long‑term absentees are now expected to play a meaningful part in the season.
For a club that ended the window short of a right-sided winger, a midfielder and a right-back, any reinforcement from within feels significant. Liverpool pushed late to prise Malo Gusto from Chelsea on loan, seeing the Frenchman as cover both at right-back and in midfield, but the London club refused to sanction an affordable deal. The door shut. The squad stayed light.
So the focus turns to the treatment room.
According to The Times, Liverpool believe Hugo Ekitike, Giovanni Leoni and Conor Bradley will each feature for a “chunk” of the campaign. Not cameos. Not a token run-out in May. A proper stretch of games.
Given where all three are coming from, that is no small statement.
Ekitike, the most recent addition to the injury list, has still been out since April. Bradley has not kicked a ball this year. Leoni has been missing since last September, closing in on a full year on the sidelines. These are not minor setbacks; they are the sort of injuries that blur timelines and cloud expectations.
The club have kept return dates deliberately vague. No one inside Liverpool can say with certainty what level any of them will hit when they do reappear. The first step will simply be crossing the white line again. Match sharpness, rhythm, confidence – all of that comes much later.
That is why the suggestion they can each contribute a “chunk” of the season lands as a genuine boost. It hints at more than a cautious drip-feed of minutes. A month or so of availability apiece would already ease the load. Anything beyond that starts to change the texture of Liverpool’s options.
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Leoni is understood to be the closest. The expectation is that he will soon be back in contention, though Liverpool will not rush him after such a long lay-off. They can’t afford to. His reintroduction will be managed carefully, but simply having him back on the training pitch will give the coaching staff another body to work with in a stretched area of the squad.
Ekitike’s path looks longer. His return is thought to be closer to Christmas, yet the belief remains that he will still play a part before the season is out. After months out, even a late surge of involvement would help ease the burden on a forward line that has already been asked to go to the well repeatedly.
Then there is Bradley, the great unknown.
Information on the young right-back has been sparse. The extent of his problem has never been laid out in detail, and there has been no clear public roadmap for when he might be ready. Liverpool’s scramble for a right-back in the final hours of the window hardly painted a reassuring picture.
That is why The Times’ line on Bradley matters. If he, too, is now viewed as capable of playing a real slice of the season, it shifts the mood around a position that has looked dangerously exposed.
Liverpool still have to navigate the coming weeks with what they have. The squad remains lighter than they would like, the margin for further injuries uncomfortably small. But the prospect of Ekitike, Leoni and Bradley stepping back into the frame – not just as faces on the bench, but as genuine options – offers something that has been in short supply at Anfield since the window closed.
A little room to breathe.
