Liverpool manager Arne Slot criticised the challenge from Tottenham defender Micky van de Ven that broke Alexander Isak\u2019s leg, while expressing belief the club\u2019s \u00a3125 signing can return and make an impact before the 2025\u201326 campaign concludes in May.<\/p>\n
Slot acknowledged the gravity of the situation but stressed there are worse possibilities than the current diagnosis. There were rampant fears that Isak had damaged the dreaded ACL, a knee injury which routinely sidelines players for a minimum of nine months. As Rodri has proven for Manchester City, it can take even longer to fully get back up to scratch.<\/p>\n
The Dutch boss confirmed that Isak would be recovering from “a long injury for a couple of months” but was already looking ahead to a time when his No. 9 will be back on the pitch. “Yes, I am confident,” Slot insisted when asked if Isak would be in a fit state to feature before the campaign concludes in May.<\/p>\n
On Isak\u2019s disrupted start at Anfield, Slot said: “It\u2019s been a really challenging and difficult period for him,”<\/p>\n
“When you join a new club, he was very excited but you want to show the qualities you have. That was simply impossible. If you haven\u2019t trained for three or four months on a serious level with the team and you are playing in this league, you need to be on top of your game to impact a game of football.<\/p>\n
“That took, which we all knew, months before he could because there was no preseason. There was just games, games, games, games.<\/p>\n
“There was hardly any time to train. We all knew it would take him time. That\u2019s why it is so unlucky that he is now injured. We all saw with his goal against West Ham, with his goal against Tottenham , he was getting closer and closer to the player he was last season at Newcastle.”<\/p>\n
Slot was clear about who he blamed for the incident. “For me it was a reckless challenge,” Slot fumed in reference to Micky van de Ven\u2019s lunge on Isak. Xavi Simons had been sent off in the first half after sinking his studs into Virgil van Dijk\u2019s calf, but Van de Ven escaped any punishment for his collision with Isak.<\/p>\n
“I spoke a lot about the challenge from Xavi Simons which was completely unintentional. I don\u2019t think you\u2019ll ever get an injury from that tackle,” Slot added. “The tackle of Van de Ven if you make it 10 times, I think 10 times there is a serious chance a player gets a serious injury.”<\/p>\n
Slot also outlined selection issues ahead of the trip to winless Wolves on Dec. 27: Conor Bradley and Cody Gakpo are “50-50” to face Wolves, Joe Gomez and Wataru Endo are definitely unavailable, and Dominik Szoboszlai must serve a one-match ban after collecting a fifth yellow card at Tottenham.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Slot said Van de Ven’s tackle was reckless after Alexander Isak broke his leg; he expects a comeback.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5316,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,172],"tags":[1073,195,299],"class_list":["post-5317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-epl","tag-acl-injury","tag-alexander-isak","tag-arne-slot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5317","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=5317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}