Medical insider names Diogo Jota return date as behind-the-scenes Liverpool 'fears' revealed
Diogo Jota could be out of action for Liverpool until early September.
That is the view of medical expert Ben Dinnery, who runs the Premier Injuries site and has a background in injury and data analysis.
Jota, 25, has not featured for Liverpool in pre-season after he suffered a hamstring injury while playing for Portugal at the tail end of 2021-22.
The Portuguese forward, who signed a new long-term deal with the Reds on Tuesday (2 August), returned to training in June but almost immediately suffered a recurrence of the same problem.
As quoted by the Liverpool ECHO on Monday (1 August), Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp revealed that it will "take a while" before Jota is able to return.
Dinnery suggested that he will likely miss at least the first four weeks of the Merseysiders' 2022-23 campaign.
"It's difficult because we are talking about a player who has been sidelined for the best part of two months," he told Football Insider's Adam Williams.
"The fear internally is that you are bringing a player back who is on a cusp of a return to play and he suffers a setback in one of his early sessions.
"That makes the medical team a lot more wary about how much to push.
"You need to take a step back and allow Jota to get those foundational steps in. These will be activity based rather than led by a specific timeframe.
"If it was mid-July when he suffered that setback, we could be talking late August or early September."