Philippe Coutinho has been handed a lifeline with Barcelona following an injury to Ousmane Dembele.<\/p>\n
The Frenchman has been sidelined for at least a fortnight after spraining his ankle and is set to miss his side’s Copa Del Ray fixture against Sevilla and LaLiga encounters against Girona and Valencia.<\/p>\n
According to Marca, Ernesto Valverde will now give Coutinho a chance to prove his worth in the starting XI.<\/p>\n
There has been speculation that the Brazilian was in line for a return to the Premier League after struggling for consistency for the Spanish champions – with\u00a0Chelsea and Manchester United reportedly interested in his services.<\/p>\n
But the Camp Nou hierarchy are reluctant to offload their multi-million pound signing for a loss and are being patient to see if he can emulate his brilliant form for Liverpool with Barcelona.<\/p>\n
French World Cup winner Dembele had moved ahead of the 26-year-old in the pecking order with some impressive displays.<\/p>\n
But now that he is sidelined, there won’t be a more golden opportunity for Coutinho to show his club why they signed him and recapture his place in the starting XI.<\/p>\n
The midfielder has four goals and two assists in 19 league appearances this season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Philippe Coutinho has been handed a lifeline with Barcelona following an injury to Ousmane Dembele. The Frenchman has been sidelined for at least a fortnight after spraining his ankle and is set to miss his side’s Copa Del Ray fixture against Sevilla and LaLiga encounters against Girona and Valencia. According to Marca, Ernesto Valverde will…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}