Arne Slot has repeatedly drawn attention to an injury list he believes has been overlooked amid debate about Liverpool\u2019s summer spending. The manager blamed those absences for a season that began with a seven-match winning run and then deteriorated into a historic slump. Slot\u2019s side lost four successive matches for the first time in his managerial career and ultimately suffered nine defeats in 12 games, the club\u2019s worst sequence in 72 years.<\/p>\n
After a damaging 4\u20131 loss to PSV Eindhoven, Liverpool have since put together a seven-game unbeaten run. Slot accepted those displays remain inconsistent but insisted his available group deserve credit given the number of players missing. \u201cIf you look at our bench you didn\u2019t see any player that is a midfielder that has played more than 10 minutes in the Premier League so far,\u201d he sniffed, referencing the youthful substitutes who watched Liverpool narrowly beat Wolverhampton Wanderers on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why I\u2019m so pleased with our current results, because if we would\u2019ve dropped points people would probably talk about the fact of how many players we miss.\u201d he continued. \u201cBut we don\u2019t drop points and that\u2019s why no-one is talking about the players we miss. Maybe because they only talk about how much we spend!\u201d<\/p>\n
Liverpool were without the suspended Dominik Szoboszlai for the visit of the Premier League\u2019s worst side, while Mohamed Salah was at the Africa Cup of Nations. Alexander Isak remains sidelined with a broken leg, forcing Slot to field \u00a3116 million ($156.3 million) summer recruit Florian Wirtz out wide alongside Federico Chiesa. Cody Gakpo, the club\u2019s second top scorer this season, was used from the bench.<\/p>\n
\u201cA way to have game management is also having the opportunity to make substitutions,\u201d he fretted. \u201cMaybe to bring an extra defender in or these kind of things. Last year a lot of times when we were 2\u20131 up, or one goal up, I brought Wataru Endo in. I already said, I don\u2019t know if everybody notices it, but we miss quite a lot of players. That\u2019s why it\u2019s so special for these players [who] are fit that they are bringing these results in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Slot added: \u201cUnfortunately, Giovanni Leoni, we won\u2019t see him this season, and Alex [Isak] is going to take a long time before we see him again,\u201d Slot mused. \u201cYou can do the numbers [about] how much money that is and if you combine that with how much we\u2019ve sold, that\u2019s maybe an interesting story to make.\u201d<\/p>\n
Slot has also pushed back on a one-sided focus on the club\u2019s record summer spend of \u00a3415 million, noting the departures of Luis D\u00edaz and Darwin N\u00fa\u00f1ez to Bayern Munich and Al Hilal for around \u00a3110 million. Leoni and Isak account for around \u00a3151 million of Liverpool\u2019s outlay and are likely to miss the majority of the campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Slot: injuries, not spending, are the unseen story behind Liverpool’s inconsistent season. Read more<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5566,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,172,1163],"tags":[1211,195,299],"class_list":["post-5567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-epl","category-transfers","tag-africa-cup-of-nations","tag-alexander-isak","tag-arne-slot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5567","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=5567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}