Two lads, two bikes, one shared mission

It is not the kind of Liverpool content you see every week, but there is something genuinely heartening about this one. Hugo Ekitike posted a photo to his Instagram of himself and Giovanni Leoni side by side on exercise bikes, sleeves up, muscles on show, three fire emojis doing the rest of the talking. Leoni promptly reposted it to his own story. No words needed, really.

Both players have been through it this season. Leoni went down with an ACL injury on his very first appearance for the club, a Carabao Cup clash against Southampton back in September, and has spent the best part of twelve months grinding through his rehabilitation ever since. Ekitike's blow came later but was no less brutal: a ruptured Achilles tendon during the Champions League fixture against Paris Saint-Germain in April. Two serious injuries, two long roads back.

What their returns would mean for Liverpool

When Leoni does eventually make it back, he arrives into a central defensive picture that has been stretched thin. A young defender who was clearly trusted enough to be thrown in on his debut, his return would give Andoni Iraola genuine options at the back that he has been without for too long.

Ekitike's situation carries a different kind of anticipation. In his first season with the club, the Frenchman scored 17 goals and chipped in with six assists across 45 appearances in all competitions. Those are numbers that matter. His return would give Liverpool real support and competition up front, and the hope will be that he picks up somewhere close to where he left off before that Achilles gave way.

Iraola offered a frank assessment during pre-season when asked about the pair alongside fellow long-term absentee Conor Bradley. "In terms of order, I think the closest one to returning is Leoni," he said. "After will be Conor and Hugo, but especially the last two are still way off. We are talking about months and still a lot of time out." Honest, if not exactly what supporters desperate to see both players back wanted to hear.

The mentality keeping Leoni going

What has been striking throughout this whole saga is the maturity Leoni has shown in how he talks about his injury. Speaking in August, he was candid about the dark moment that followed his debut setback, but also about the shift in thinking that has carried him through. "When I had that moment in the first game, in my debut, I said, 'Why [did this happen] to me?'" he admitted. "But I don't think that is the best thing to say to yourself."

He went on to describe a conscious decision to reframe the whole experience. "I tried to change [my] mind and to say, 'OK, it's happening to me so I have to do something to become better than before.' This was the best thing to do for me," he said. "If you take everything with a good mentality, you can understand and be back stronger than before. I tried to view it as an opportunity to improve."

He also spoke warmly about the rehabilitation group that has formed around him, mentioning Ekitike, Stefan Bajcetic and Conor Bradley as teammates he has leaned on through the process. There is a proper camaraderie building in that corner of the training ground, and if the fire emojis on Ekitike's Instagram are anything to go by, they are not short of motivation either. The question now is simply when, not if, Liverpool get them back.