Jürgen Klopp acknowledged he has plenty to ponder ahead of selecting his starting line-up for Saturday’s Merseyside derby with Everton, but wants to give players with fitness concerns as long as possible to determine whether they are available.

The Reds have a number of injury worries to assess ahead of the short trip to Goodison Park, with leading scorer Mohamed Salah the latest doubt after sustaining a knock against Manchester City on Wednesday night.

However, Klopp is keen to give his squad as much time as he can to prove their fitness before he names his matchday squad for the Merseyside derby.

Asked for an injury update during his pre-Everton press conference at Melwood on Friday, the boss said: “I have not too much to say about it for two reasons. I don’t want to give any information away is the first one and the other one is we want to wait a little bit, that’s all.

“We have a few hours to go until we go into the hotel and then a few more until the ref starts the game. You will see who is available and who is not available when you see the line-up tomorrow.

“For us, it’s not about rotation or something like that. We need to find solutions, how it always is, but I don’t want to give too much information away.”

Liverpool will be without Joel Matip, Joe Gomez, Adam Lallana and Emre Can for the trip across Stanley Park due to respective injury issues.

Klopp continued: “We have already a difficult situation, everybody knows that. If you lose a centre-half out of the blue, if you then lose a centre mid in the same week pretty much, another full-back/centre-half in the international break, and then another centre mid around the international break, it’s not nothing – it’s not really cool.

“Now we still have the same number of games that we would have had with them, so of course we have to consider pretty much everything. In the end, we need to have a line-up that gives us firstly an opportunity to win the game – and that’s what we will try.”

One factor that will not come into consideration for Klopp when deciding upon his line-up at Goodison is Tuesday’s return meeting with City in the Champions League quarter-final.

“You cannot do it like this because you have no clue, anything can happen overnight – a player can get ill or something like that,” he stated.

“The only way to really work in this job is to be focused always on the next game – and that is Everton. Then after the game, you have to see what you can do with that.

“I said it before, the next game is never the reason for rotation, it’s always the last game. If I think after the last game we have to do this or that then we will do it, but it is never anything to do with the next game.”