The striker missed much of the pre-season while trying to arrange his transfer from Newcastle United to Liverpool and the manager admitted he plans to err on the side of caution with his new signing in a bid to minimise the Swede's risk of injury.

Asked if Isak will start against Burnley on Sunday (14.09.25), he said: "The Swedish manager Jon Dahl Tomasson deserves a big compliment because he gets maybe the best striker in the world in, needs to play two very important games, but understands if he were to play him twice 90 minutes then probably the player would have been injured for multiple weeks.

"We will treat Alex the same as they did. Don't expect him to be every single game 90 minutes on the pitch. That's definitely not going to happen in the upcoming weeks.

"He missed a proper pre-season, he missed three or four months of team sessions. We have to build him up gradually, with us playing so many games, hardly any training time, that's going to be a challenge.

"But we haven't signed him for the upcoming two weeks, we've signed him for six years so this is what we have to keep in mind and what the fans have to keep in mind if I take him off at a certain moment or only bring him in for a small amount of minutes, it's all for the long-term fitness of the player."

The manager knows Liverpool will face a fight against Burnley after last season's newly-promoted teams proved to be tough opposition.

He said: "We had problems at Ipswich, at Leicester and Southampton. We know that every game is difficult and I only have to look back at last season to understand that."