Arne Slot offered a concise explanation for Milos Kerkez being withdrawn early at Turf Moor, saying the decision was driven by caution after the left-back picked up a booking.<\/p>\n
There was no visible injury as the 21-year-old left the field while the scoreline remained goalless. Kerkez had been cautioned for simulation in the 22nd minute, tumbling in front of Josh Laurent as the ball ran out of play. Turf Moor called for a second yellow that did not arrive, but Slot made clear he feared a repeat offence.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was because he got a yellow card,\u201d Slot explained to Match of the Day when the topic of Kerkez\u2019s departure was raised. \u201cI think the fans here thought a chance for them to win the game is if we ended up with a second yellow.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith Milos I can never be 100% he doesn\u2019t make the next foul, then the fans are on top of the referee. I thought the only way we could lose it today was if we went down to 10 men.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kerkez was one of Liverpool\u2019s summer signings and had been expected to adapt quickly. The energetic Hungary international had spent two years adapting to the Premier League at Bournemouth and thrived in the full-throttle system deployed by Andoni Iraola. While other arrivals such as Florian Wirtz, Hugo Ekitik\u00e9 and Jeremie Frimpong were seen as needing time to settle in, Kerkez was billed as a plug-in-and-play option.<\/p>\n
That transition has not been straightforward. Kerkez suffered a difficult home debut against Bournemouth on the opening weekend, often losing one-on-one duels with Antoine Semenyo. Slot said he took him off around the hour mark in that game to remove the risk of a red. At Turf Moor the substitution came even earlier: Slot brought Andy Robertson on before 38 minutes, and Robertson immediately tested Burnley goalkeeper Martin D\u00fabravka with a low shot after breaking into the box.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arne Slot said Kerkez was removed after a yellow to avoid a second card and a potential red. at Turf<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2801,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,172],"tags":[220,801,299],"class_list":["post-2802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-epl","tag-andy-robertson","tag-antoine-semenyo","tag-arne-slot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2802","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=2802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}