Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard could be in the frame for the Premiership showdown against defending champions Manchester United on September 13 at Anfield as Reds boss Rafa Benitez is confident that the midfielder can recover in less than 15 days after a groin operation.

The England star will miss tomorrow’s trip to Aston Villa and the forthcoming England World Cup qualifiers away to Andorra and Croatia, as he underwent the surgery yesterday after he was hampered by the groin problem for the past six weeks.

“Stevie couldn’t play at the same level as normal,” Benitez is quoted as saying in the Liverpool Daily Post. “We needed to be quick and do the operation as soon as possible. The operations are small and simple, they’re not serious.

“It will be more or less 15 days out, but maybe as we’ve done the operations quickly it could be less.

“If we’d delayed it, then he might have been out for even longer. You can’t keep an injured player playing games. We needed to do the operation now. Steven couldn’t play and was struggling with the problem he had and was always in pain.

“We spoke to him on Wednesday and said we knew his situation. We knew he needed the operation, so asked him not to think about the pain as it would all be sorted.

“He was happy as we gave him a solution, he knew that he could play and could then have the operation. It was impossible to delay the operation any longer.”