Liverpool may see Mamadou Sakho return from his Crystal Palace loan ahead of schedule.
Sakho has spent the second half of this season with the Eagles as they clambered to Premier League safety, most notably with a 2-1 win over the Reds last weekend.
Although the defender was ineligible to face his parent club, he sat on the visitors’ bench at Anfield and controversially celebrated Christian Benteke’s first-half equaliser.
Palace boss Sam Allardyce had been exploring the possibility of making Sakho’s stay with the club a permanent one upon the expiry of his loan deal this summer.
But that move has been plunged into doubt after the 27-year-old was stretchered off midway through the second half of his side’s defeat to Tottenham on Wednesday night.
Allardyce admitted after the reversal to Mauricio Pochettino’s side that the knee injury may have curtailed Sakho’s time at Selhurst Park.
He said: “Our biggest problem is at centre half – Sakho with another knee injury. He has hyperextended the knee.
“It is certainly serious enough to keep him out for who knows how long, we won’t know until we diagnose it.
“But, if it is ligament, it may be the end [of his loan], it may not.”
Sakho’s loan with Palace came following months in the wilderness at Liverpool, which began with his expulsion from the club’s pre-season tour of America.
The centre-back, only recently acquitted of a failed drugs test by UEFA, further angered Jurgen Klopp with an early-morning social media outburst about his first-team exile.
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