Liverpool has a tough schedule ahead of them as the team of Brendan Rodgers has to face off against Tottenham, Manchester City and Chelsea in the month of December. Liverpool are following Arsenal closely behind with only 5 points being the difference between 1st and 2nd place as they are enjoying one of their best starts of the season.

The problem however with Liverpool is that they have go against some of the best teams in England without their talismanic and legendary captain Steven Gerrard who had to leave the pitch during Liverpool’s match against West Ham and according to a scan that was made by the medical staff of the club, he might be sitting in the sidelines for up to 6 weeks until his recovery can be completed.

Daniel Sturridge is another player that Brendan Rodgers will not be able to choose for his upcoming important matches as the player is out until January after picking up an ankle injury while on the defensive side of the squad, Jose Enrique is still making a recovery from a knee surgery and is expected to be back to the team in February.

The next weeks will be of crucial importance for Liverpool if they want to continue their charge at the top spots of the Premier League and more importantly is to maintain the pressure on other clubs in hopes of securing the title.

Liverpool’s goalkeeper Simon Mignolet is positive that they can deal with the absence of Gerrard.

“Steven is obviously very important for us .He delivers the ball into the box with such quality. It wasn’t nice to see him going off the pitch like that’’.

“But we have a decent enough squad to deal with injuries and cope with these kind of things. I am sure someone else in the dressing room will be ready to step up. We have other leaders in the team as well and we must continue playing in the same way’’. Mignolet told the ECHO

Dirk Kuyt will not be able to feature for his country Holland in their upcoming couple of friendly fixtures which are against Japan and Colombia respectively. He has taken his name back from the national squad because of his hamstring problem which he picked up while making an appearance for his club Fenerbahce against Galatasaray.

Kuyt has so far featured for Holland in 98 games and if he had been fit for the upcoming two friendly matches, he would have become the 6^th Dutch player to play 100 international matches, but, unfortunately, the 33 years old winger got injured and he needs to wait now to reach that milestone.

Kuyt had played his first match for the Holland national team way back in 2004 against Liechtenstein.

Meanwhile, Kuyt is not the only Holland player who has got injured and has withdrawn himself from the upcoming friendly fixtures. A couple of other vital players including the skipper Robin Van Persie have withdrawn too.

Van Persie injured his groin while featuring for his club Manchester United in their previous Premier League game against Arsenal. He had played brilliantly in that game and had scored a match winning goal, but, with just 5 minutes remaining in the match, he went off the ground and later on, it was revealed that he had suffered a groin problem because of which he would not be able to play for Holland in the friendly matches against Japan and Colombia.

The third player who has withdrawn from the Dutch squad is Jordy Clasie who plays for Feyenoord. He is suffering from foot injury.

The replacements for these 3 players have been announced by the Oranje boss Louis Van Gaal. Those replacements are Siem de Jong, Leroy Fer and Davy Propper.