Press conferenceJürgen Klopp on Mohamed Salah plan and Sparta Prague team selection

Salah has not been included in the Reds’ XI since New Year’s Day after he sustained a muscle injury while on Africa Cup of Nations duty in January and then suffered a setback while scoring upon his return from the bench at Brentford last month.

However, the Egyptian has made substitute appearances in each of his side’s last two matches – the first leg in Czechia, which Liverpool won 5-1, and Sunday’s 1-1 draw with Manchester City – and may begin Thursday’s game at Anfield.

“It’s possible it would have been possible for him to play longer in the last game [against City], but it was just the game, how it was,” Klopp said, during Wednesday’s pre-match press conference.

“It’s important that we build up Mo, obviously super-important, but in this game changing at half-time was not necessary or possible [because] we have to deal with changes carefully.

“So, yeah, he is ready. He is top fit, everything is good now and we don’t have to deal with these kind of things anymore. I’m not sure if he is ready for 90 minutes and I’m not sure we should do 90 minutes, but he’s ready to start so that’s how it is.

“He would have been ready to start in the last game but then you don’t know for how long it makes sense and that’s always the problem when players come back.

“I can’t remember a game where I thought, ‘Mo Salah cannot play, no problem.’ It just never happened, so it’s not cool to not have him but there was a game last Sunday and there are 10 more Premier League games and hopefully a lot more cup and European games. They are all as important and Mo was completely fine with that.

“Would he have loved to play a little bit longer? Probably, yes, but I cannot before the game decide when we do what and these kind of things. But he’s ready to start.

“Should that then be 90 minutes on the pitch? That depends on how it looks in that moment but we all know Mo usually can play game after game after game after game.

“Now he was out for a surprisingly long time, but now he is back and we have to make sure that we can really count on him consistently again.”

Klopp was also asked about his wider selection plans for the tie and whether the holding of a commanding aggregate advantage will influence his decision-making.

The manager replied: “I think it’s really important that whatever football game you play you should… sometimes you have to chase a game and if we lost the first game 1-0 you cannot ignore the first one, or drew, then still you just have to win the game first and foremost, and then you will see how much that means, the result you can get.

“And for us it just means that means that we want to play the best possible football game, that’s always the way we decided about the line-up. I couldn’t tell you in this moment what I will do even if I wanted to.

“I wouldn’t but I couldn’t [anyway] because after that I go to the training ground and in these times you wait until the last second and then everybody tells you, ‘He has a niggle here, he has a niggle there and he might need an extra day’ or these kind of things.

“We had that yesterday already with a few players who needed an extra day, so let’s see how that looks now today and then I make my decision about the line-up.

“But the idea for the line-up will be to have the best legs for that game because that’s what we need, because we have to ignore the [first-leg] result, I would say, but not the performance and performance-wise they had massive chances against us. They caused us massive problems in moments.

“Caoimh [Kelleher] had to make a few outstanding saves and that’s in my mind, not how we scored the goals and stuff like this because that was mainly individual quality. There was a few good football situations as well but it was individual quality a lot, so we need to keep rhythm for this part of the season now.

“It’s not about on and off, it’s about keep the rhythm and keep going and don’t think about the next game on Sunday, even when the opponent is Manchester United.”