Liverpool vent fury at FA after Gerrard injury

LIVERPOOL’S anger with England coach Fabio Capello has gone up a notch after learning captain Steven Gerrard will be out for up to a month with a grade two hamstring tear.

Gerrard was unnecessarily over-played in the 2-1 Wembley friendly defeat to France on Wednesday night.

It was the midfielder’s seventh injury on international duty in three years and all the hard work manager Roy Hodgson has done to ease the burden on a key player – like resting him for the Europa League – has been undone.

His treatment by England appears to contrast with that of strikers Fernando Torres and Dirk Kuyt who, although they went into their respective internationals with slight ankle injuries, were handled differently.

“We have a good relationship with the Spanish medical staff,” said head of sports medicine and sports science Peter Brukner.

“They assessed Fernando and he had a good day or two of treatment over there and didn’t train. They felt he was okay to play 45 minutes (in the 4-0 defeat to Portugal) and he came through okay.

“Dirk is coming back after a pretty severe ankle injury and after playing three games in a week he was a little bit sore.

“We discussed it with him and the Dutch team agreed it would probably not be a good idea for him to play, so he sat out the Netherlands game (against Turkey).”

Gerrard’s unavailability could not have come at a worse time with the Reds having struggled in their last two Barclays Premier League games.

The fixture list is relatively kind to Liverpool in the run up to new year, with games against West Ham, Tottenham, Aston Villa, Newcastle, Fulham, Blackpool and Wolves.

However, Gerrard could miss more than half of those fixtures and with Lucas Leiva suspended for tomorrow’s visit of the Hammers, central midfield is significantly weakened.

Liverpool’s head of fitness and conditioning Darren Burgess appeared to sum up the feeling on Merseyside with an angry outburst on social networking site Twitter.

“Completely amateurish and now we pay for their incompetence. Absolutely disgraceful.”

Brukner has taken a more diplomatic view, describing the injury as “significant”.

“He’s going to be out for a little while. I’d imagine it could be three to four weeks,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do about that now.”