Arne Slot has been clear: he does not view Liverpool\u2019s options as deficient. His recent public criticism was aimed at availability issues rather than a lack of quality after what the club spent in the summer transfer window to bolster a title-winning squad.<\/p>\n
Slot pushed back against suggestions he doubted the squad, instead pointing to injuries and disrupted pre-season preparation as the root cause of the current difficulties that have seen Liverpool drop from first to seventh in a matter of weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe miss nothing,\u201d he began. \u201cI am happy that you asked this question because I am completely happy with the team and with all the quality that we have and I am also completely convinced by the strategy and the policy that we have but that makes the issue\u2014if you call it an issue\u2014is not all of them have had a proper pre-season or have been injured.<\/p>\n
Slot explained how absences reduce the effective squad size and force the same players into heavier workloads. \u201cWhen three or four are injured you go back to 16 players. I am a firm believer that 20 or 21 player is enough but you have to keep them fit as we did last season. We are struggling a bit more to keep them fit, in my opinion, for obvious reasons.<\/p>\n
He used individuals to underline the point: \u201cAlex [Isak] is a great example of this. A few others have missed out on pre-season or had injuries during pre-season. It has been more difficult than last season to keep them all available and then if a few of them are not available, it comes down a lot to the same players. Maybe last season we were more lucky and now we are more unlucky.\u201d<\/p>\n
The manager was adamant that injury problems should not be an excuse for poor results. \u201cNo excuses for our results before people say this,\u201d he clarified. \u201cIt is nothing to do with the squad depth, it is how we’ve gone throughout the season in terms of injuries and availability.\u201d<\/p>\n
Slot acknowledged he must sometimes take risks to build match fitness, citing his decision-making over player minutes. \u201cLet me use Alex as an example,\u201d he continued. \u201cHe had to do a pre-season inside the season and then people will argue, \u2018Why do you play him?\u2019 But if I don\u2019t play him, I don\u2019t have him available and we need to have him available or then we have to play Hugo [Ekitik\u00e9] every single game.<\/p>\n
He also referenced workload comparisons and named players who have been in and out with injuries: \u201cI was with Owen Hargreaves when he made the comparison between the two of them and he showed that one played 34 games last season and the other played 34 and we play 60 over here. That is why I need to get Alex as soon as I can into playing as many games as he can. That has been something not only with him but with a few others as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cJeremie Frimpong has been in and out with injuries quite a few times, same with Conor Bradley so if one is out the other has to play more and that is why I\u2019ve had to play Dominik Szoboszlai a few times in that position.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat has been something what every team has, so it is not an excuse, but what was a bit different than last season. Last season, they all had one year Premier League experience as a minimum, they were all fit when we started and they stayed fit. Now, they weren\u2019t all fit from the start and some players have to play more than you want them to do and that is a risk of them getting injured as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is just the situation as it is and we have more than enough good players available to play the game on Saturday, Tuesday and Sunday but I have to take care of them and that\u2019s why I made the decision to not play some a few days ago.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Slot: squad is sufficient; injuries have reduced availability and fuelled Liverpool’s slide. and more<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4162,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,172],"tags":[195,299],"class_list":["post-4163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-epl","tag-alexander-isak","tag-arne-slot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4163","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=4163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}