The Gerrard “will he, won’t he” saga continues with confirmation that the Liverpol skipper is included in the squad for tomorrow’s game with Blackburn.

As reported yesterday, Gerrard has suffered a slight strain of his adductor muscle, although today Rafa appeared to be playing down the injury, whilst still not committing to whether he will start with his skipper…

“It is not very serious but we need to analyse the risk for the future as well. We know it’s a very important game, so we’ll decide tomorrow,” remarked Benitez.

“This is a very important game, so we know it will be really good if he can play. But if we were to lose him for the next few weeks it could be a big risk…I will talk with him and the doctor on Saturday morning before deciding.”

That’s little help to Gerrard’s fantasy owners – although things do look slightly more optimistic than they appeared last night following the scan results. Clearly it would be a major risk to hand Gerrard the FPL armband given this situation but the wise strategy appears to be starting him in your lineup and letting the auto-subs take care should he not figure.

The only concern with that tactic is that, one way or another, you could get very limited pitch time out of Gerrard tomorrow. However, he is more than capable of inflicting damage to Blackburn and returning points in 20 minutes of action.