With both Borna Barisic and Nikola Katic’s injuries confirmed by the Croatian Football Federation and forcing both players out of the international break with the seniors and U21s respectively, we’re both than a touch baffled now by Steven Gerrard’s pre-match assertion at the weekend that there were no new injuries at all.

It is possible something was sustained in a training session after the press conference, but we’re unaware of such a session having taken place, and Gerrard’s quote was fairly precise:

“Not at the moment (no new injuries), a couple of bumps and bruises but nothing, nothing major.”

He stated that on the 5th and mysteriously Katic was on the bench the following day for the visit of Craig Levein’s side, and unless there was a Saturday training session (quite possible) we don’t know about, we’re a bit mystified as to how both players got these injuries.

It is of course possible both sustained these injury on international duty with the news only breaking yesterday (and quite early at that) in both cases, but that would be one hell of a bad luck for both players to get injured in such a small window.

Quite honestly we’ve no idea when or how these happened, but both are valuable assets and we need them back fit ASAP.