Crystal Palace produced a clear 3-0 win at Anfield as Isma\u00efla Sarr scored twice and left Liverpool facing questions over a remarkably inexperienced starting XI.<\/p>\n
Manager Arne Slot faced pointed scrutiny after leaving senior figures such as Virgil van Dijk, Ibrahima Konat\u00e9 and Mohamed Salah out of the matchday squad. The nine substitutes between them had just 19 first-team appearances, and none were older than 21.<\/p>\n
In a series of postmatch explanations Slot compared his selection to other Premier League sides. \u201cI saw City\u2019s lineup and I don\u2019t think they had one starter from the weekend,\u201d Slot mistakenly moaned, \u201cbut it felt as if you look at their lineup they played with their 11 starters. So maybe it also gives a little bit of insight\u2014everybody has always said how big of a squad we have.\u201d He pointed to Manchester City bringing proven senior players off the bench in their cup game, citing John Stones, Jo\u0161ko Gvardiol and Phil Foden being used against Swansea City.<\/p>\n
He also referenced Chelsea as an example of available depth. \u201cWhen we played Chelsea, I said, \u2018They\u2019re missing eight but they can still bring Est\u00eav\u00e3o in.\u2019 We are only missing four players at the moment and already we needed to start with four players under the age of 19. And after I made two substitutions we were on six [under-19s].\u201d<\/p>\n
Slot stressed the demands on a squad still adapting. \u201cI saw some of the struggles that the players have had in preseason and players that came from different leagues,\u201d the Dutch boss sighed. \u201cIt is a new challenge for them to play at Premier League and Champions League level, three games in seven days.\u201d<\/p>\n
He defended using academy options in the Carabao Cup. \u201cTo add to that, this club has always used this competition for their academy players as well,\u201d Slot added in a desperate attempt to save face. \u201cSo for the non-starters and the academy players, this felt to me like the right decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
On injuries he warned of risks to player fitness: \u201cLast time I played a player that wasn\u2019t fully prepared\u2014we thought he was prepared but it was the first time\u2014[Alexander] Isak, he got injured. Last time we played Southampton [Giovanni] Leoni was injured and it was a red card for Hugo Ekitik\u00e9. Those are the things we can\u2019t use with a big week coming up,\u201d he told Sky Sports.<\/p>\n
He finished by highlighting squad limitations. \u201cPeople all of a sudden think we have 25 players available. But we mainly have 20 players then we have four injuries. I only have one right fullback, Conor Bradley, as an example. Every time I had to play him twice in three days or three times in seven days [last season] I had to take him off with a hamstring injury or something else.<\/p>\n
“Are you willing to take that risk with such a big week coming up?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Slot defended a youthful Liverpool XI after a 3-0 Anfield loss, citing rotation, injuries and depth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4133,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1067,175],"tags":[195,299,1066],"class_list":["post-4134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-carabao-cup","category-liverpool","tag-alexander-isak","tag-arne-slot","tag-carabao-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4134","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=4134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}