Arne Slot has pushed back on the suggestion Liverpool must sign Alexander Isak to be properly equipped up front this summer. The manager argued his squad maintains attacking depth despite outgoing transfers and the ongoing shock of Diogo Jota\u2019s passing.<\/p>\n
Liverpool sold Darwin N\u00fa\u00f1ez and Luis D\u00edaz to Al Hilal and Bayern Munich respectively. Hugo Ekitik\u00e9 remains, described in the squad as the only natural centre forward available to Slot. The club did make a formal bid of \u00a3110 million ($148.8 million) for Isak at the start of August, an approach that Newcastle rebuffed, and the Magpies have stated their striker is unlikely to leave this window.<\/p>\n
Slot adopted a measured tone ahead of Liverpool\u2019s trip to St. James\u2019 Park on Monday night. \u201cIt depends how you want to look at it,\u201d the Dutch coach said, before mapping out his alternatives. \u201cIf you want to add Florian Wirtz as an attacking option then you can make it five [available forwards], so yeah, we\u2019ve sold Darwin and brought in Hugo.<\/p>\n
\u201cLucho [D\u00edaz] has gone, you can maybe see Florian as a replacement for that. And, yes, we all know what happened to Diogo. If you look at it like this, maybe we haven\u2019t [got enough] but Jeremie Frimpong, when he is fit, is definitely an option to play as a winger as well, so then we end up at six forwards.\u201d<\/p>\n
The manager did not include Harvey Elliott or teenage Rio Ngumoha when listing the players he felt bolstered his options. \u201cWe have six players who can play in three positions,\u201d Slot reiterated. \u201cThat\u2019s the answer, yeah [I\u2019m happy].\u201d<\/p>\n
Slot also confirmed he is open to using Florian Wirtz in a central false nine role, a position in which the manager has previously deployed Dominik Szoboszlai and Curtis Jones. \u201cI would consider Florian in more games for that position,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
For now, Slot is projecting confidence in the group at his disposal while acknowledging the club pursued Isak and that Newcastle rejected the bid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Slot insists Liverpool have sufficient attacking depth even without Alexander Isak this summer. Now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2053,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,172],"tags":[195,206,231],"class_list":["post-2054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-epl","tag-alexander-isak","tag-florian-wirtz","tag-hugo-ekitike"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}