Liverpool manager Arne Slot confirmed that both Hugo Ekitik\u00e9 and Florian Wirtz have been managed carefully after showing muscular problems while adapting to English football\u2019s festive programme. Ekitik\u00e9 travelled with the squad to London at the weekend but was withdrawn once medical results arrived. \u201cHe felt something during the MRI scan and we got the results when we were flying,\u201d Slot revealed in his postmatch press conference.<\/p>\n
Slot said the initial hope was that the issues were mild. \u201cWe were hoping it was a bit of DOMS [delayed onset muscle soreness], which he also had.\u201d He added: \u201cIt\u2019s not a big surprise he gets a bit of DOMS,\u201d and explained the club could not risk using Ekitik\u00e9 as a substitute when scans showed more than expected.<\/p>\n
The Liverpool boss expressed optimism over availability for the midweek trip. He told Sky Sports \u201chopefully [he\u2019ll be] back for the Arsenal game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wirtz, who started in the 2\u20132 draw with Fulham and scored his second goal in three games, had been a fitness doubt before that fixture. As Slot outlined: \u201cFlorian had the same last week when we put him in an MRI scan and it was only DOMS. He didn\u2019t have anything but he is also for the first time experiencing this programme.<\/p>\n
“If I don\u2019t have that many players, I would like the ones I do have available and play them as many minutes as I can realistically. That\u2019s what I tried to do today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Slot has frequently lamented the squad\u2019s injury list, though the numbers do not fully back his complaints. Alexander Isak\u2019s absence is the most obvious loss, and the striker\u2019s struggle to match a \u00a3125 million ($169.2 million) price tag prior to the incident that produced his broken leg reduces the longer-term impact of that absence. The burden of Isak\u2019s injury has fallen on Ekitik\u00e9, and a similar effect follows Giovanni Leoni\u2019s ACL tear in September. That injury has denied Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konat\u00e9 meaningful respite; both have started all 20 Premier League fixtures this season. There are also doubts over Joe Gomez\u2019s availability, while Wataru Endo remains sidelined with an ankle problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Both Ekitik\u00e9 and Wirtz had MRIs and muscular issues; Liverpool face Arsenal with several doubts too<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5749,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,175,172],"tags":[1073,1081,299],"class_list":["post-5750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-liverpool","category-epl","tag-acl-injury","tag-adaptation","tag-arne-slot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5750","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=5750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}