{"id":705,"date":"2014-01-21T21:57:25","date_gmt":"2014-01-21T21:57:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/?p=705"},"modified":"2014-01-21T21:57:25","modified_gmt":"2014-01-21T21:57:25","slug":"liverpool-lucas-out-for-two-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/football\/liverpool-lucas-out-for-two-months\/","title":{"rendered":"Liverpool Lucas out for two months"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"mediaarticlehead\">\n<div>\n<h2>Liverpool&#8217;s aspirations of finishing in the Premier League top four of the have suffered a blow after it was confirmed midfielder Lucas Leiva will be out for around two months with knee ligament injury<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div itemscope=\"\" itemtype=\"http:\/\/schema.org\/Article\">\n<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<p>Although not as serious as injury to a cruciate ligament &#8211; the 27-year-old ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in November 2011 &#8211; it will still keep him out for six to eight weeks, which would take him into March.<\/p>\n<p>Lucas sustained the injury just 20 minutes after coming on as a half-time substitute in Saturday&#8217;s 2-2 draw at home to Aston Villa.<\/p>\n<p>The defensive midfielder had been left out of the starting line-up as Rodgers opted to play captain Steven Gerrard\u00a0in a holding role for the second successive match, allowing him to field a more attacking side with returning striker Daniel Sturridge accommodated at the Brazilian&#8217;s expense.<\/p>\n<p>The experiment did not work and Rodgers corrected his mistake at half-time and Lucas&#8217; arrival did allow the Reds to regain some control.<\/p>\n<p>With\u00a0Liverpool looking to hold onto fourth place in the Premier League, Rodgers could be tempted to find additional cover in the transfer window as he has been short in the area of defensive midfielders for some time.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Liverpool&#8217;s aspirations of finishing in the Premier League top four of the have suffered a blow after it was confirmed midfielder Lucas Leiva will be out for around two months with knee ligament injury Although not as serious as injury to a cruciate ligament &#8211; the 27-year-old ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament in his left [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":706,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60,80],"tags":[37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":707,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions\/707"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}