A reoccurring knee injury denied Nahki Wells the opportunity to test himself against Liverpool in the Shankly Trophy match at John Smith’s Stadium.

The Huddersfield Town striker watched from the sidelines as Jürgen Klopp’s team won 2-0 on Wednesday before a record crowd of 21,266.

“I wanted to showcase my talents and compete with the best,” Wells said. “But unfortunately rest was far more important.”

Marko Grujic’s first-half goal and a late Alberto Moreno penalty condemned Huddersfield to their first defeat of the preseason in a match pitting David Wagner, the Huddersfield head coach, against former Borussia Dortmund managerial colleague Klopp for the first time.

Despite coming out on the losing end, Wells said there were positives for his team to take from the match.

“Obviously it was a good test for us against a good Liverpool side that had some of their very best talent on display,” Wells said. “They were better on the day, but it was good to test ourselves and get up to speed.

“I thought we could have been more clinical in the final third, but apart from that we kept the ball well and caused them some problems and put up a good test.”

Wells re-aggravated the same knee injury he picked up at the end of last season — which prevented him from taking part in Bermuda’s Scotiabank Caribbean Cup campaign — the day after scoring in Huddersfield’s 2-0 preseason home win over Rochdale on July 12.

“I tweaked my knee the next morning after we played Rochdale behind closed doors and got an injection a few days after that which requires a minimum load on my knee,” Wells said.

“I have just been doing the bike and stuff like that and a lot of upper body aerobic sessions in the gym. It [the injury] is nothing major but just something that has set me back a week or two and disrupted my preseason plan.”

Wells hopes to resume full training during Huddersfield’s tour of Austria.

“Obviously I will be playing catch up doing probably three sessions a day, but that is part and parcel of the job,” Wells said. “We have two games in Austria and I’m looking forward to putting the boots back on and getting ready for the season.”

Huddersfield are at home to Brentford in their Sky Bet Championship season opener on August 6.