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Liverpool avoid League Cup expulsion after fielding ineligible player

Joe Giddens - PA Images / PA Images / Getty

Liverpool will still host Arsenal in the League Cup fourth round after avoiding expulsion for playing Pedro Chirivella against MK Dons in the previous round.

Chirivella was ineligible for the match because Liverpool had not received international clearance to use him, but he was brought on as a second-half substitute in last month's 2-0 win in Buckinghamshire.

For doing so, Liverpool were fined £200,000 by the EFL on Wednesday, although half of that penalty is suspended until the end of the 2020-21 season.

The oversight in Chirivella's paperwork stemmed from Liverpool failing to receive a new certificate for their registered player when he returned from last season's loan spell with Extremadura Union Deportiva, a second-tier side in Spain.

"What I can say if it was our fault alone, then we have to be punished. It didn't happen on purpose but my only really concern is the player," club manager Jurgen Klopp told the Liverpool Echo's Paul Gorst when quizzed on the matter earlier this week.

"He couldn't play for half a year in Spain (on loan at Extremadura) and if he can't play for us from now on that is the biggest problem.

"(If) we made a mistake - and I am not sure if we did - but if we did, the player should not be punished."

Chirivella, 22, made his only Premier League appearance in a 3-1 defeat to Swansea City in May 2016 when Klopp was resting players for the second leg of a Europa League semifinal with Villarreal. Chirivella managed just the first half of that loss before his substitution, and he didn't feature competitively for the Reds again until his cameo against MK Dons almost three-and-a-half years later.

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