Late call on Lerma for Liverpool

Lerma sat out last week’s eventful 3-2 defeat at Arsenal due to injury, the first league game missed by the Colombia international this season.

O’Neil, speaking at his pre-match press conference on Friday, said frontmen Hamed Traorè and Marcus Tavernier would remain sidelined against the Reds.

“Jeff’s touch and go,” said O’Neil. “He’s not done as much as you would have liked but he’s further along than the others so we will make a call on him tomorrow.

“Lewis Cook is back so it’s good to have him. The rest should be fairly similar to where we were last week.”

Asked how much availability was dictating how he was approaching games, O’Neil replied: “We haven’t had as many options as we would have liked tactically because of the injury situation.

"But also the calibre of team we’re playing at the moment dictates tactically a little as well.

“Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool as a three-game run is not the easiest you can have so there are a few things tactically.

“Getting players back fit is huge. I’ve said it a lot this season so we need to get them back as quickly as we can.

“We’ve got Liverpool and Aston Villa and then an international break which will hopefully help us as well and hopefully we will come out of that in a much stronger place numbers-wise.”

The Cherries host Jürgen Klopp's team in a lunchtime kick-off (12.30pm), the Reds arriving in Dorset on the back of a five-match unbeaten run in the league, during which they have kept five clean sheets.