Arne Slot admitted the personal difficulty of leaving Mohamed Salah out as Liverpool experimented with a different shape ahead of the visit to Sunderland. \u201cIt is not a nice thing for him, not for a Liverpool fan and not for me,\u201d the Dutch boss said.<\/p>\n
Slot made clear his preference to see his talisman playing. \u201cA player that has been so important for us, you want to see him on the pitch. I prefer to see Mo on the pitch, scoring his goals and doing something special rather than the camera being on him when he isn\u2019t in the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has been so important for us, for so many years, and he will be important for us in the coming days\u2014because it is days as he goes to the Africa Cup of Nations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite Slot’s evident regret, the manager changed the team shape and deployed Dominik Szoboszlai on the right to shore up a previously exposed flank. The adjustment contributed to one of Liverpool\u2019s more complete displays this season, a match in which Liverpool denied West Ham a single shot on target.<\/p>\n
Slot welcomed the return of Joe Gomez at right back and acknowledged Szoboszlai\u2019s contribution. \u201chelped him a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, the Dutch coach was clear that using Szoboszlai out wide is a temporary fix rather than a long-term solution. \u201cI don\u2019t see Dominik as a right winger for the long-term future in this club,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
On the midfielder\u2019s versatility Slot added: \u201cHe\u2019s more of a midfielder than a winger, but the good thing about him is he can help me and us out in \u00adseveral positions if I need him in that position. In the long-term future we should have wingers \u00adplaying as \u00adwingers, midfielders playing as midfielders and defenders playing as defenders.\u201d<\/p>\n
For now Slot faces the task of balancing personnel, short-term form and upcoming absences as Liverpool move through a congested period of fixtures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Slot admitted benching Mohamed Salah was ‘not a nice thing’ as Liverpool tried a different shape…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4858,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,172],"tags":[1211,299,1215],"class_list":["post-4859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-epl","tag-africa-cup-of-nations","tag-arne-slot","tag-controversy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4859","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=4859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}