Arne Slot has revised his earlier optimism over Hugo Ekitik\u00e9\u2019s availability for Liverpool\u2019s trip to Arsenal after confirming the French striker has not returned to training. With less than 48 hours before the meeting at the Emirates Stadium, Slot admitted his previous estimate may have been premature.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe hasn\u2019t trained with us up until now,\u201d Slot said on Wednesday morning. \u201cLet\u2019s see if he can train with us today.\u201d He added: \u201cTwo or three days ago, when we played against Fulham, I said he wouldn\u2019t be out for long but it\u2019s hard because the games come so fast. He is in-between maybe training with the team or it maybe taking him one or two days extra.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ekitik\u00e9\u2019s absence was a setback both for Slot and Fantasy Premier League managers. An account credited to Lee Nobes, Liverpool\u2019s head of physiotherapy, registered an FPL transfer that dropped Ekitik\u00e9 for Brentford striker Igor Thiago before the Arsenal trip, the Daily Mail report said. Thiago arrives fresh from scoring a hat-trick and is described in the report as two goals shy of recording the most prolific Premier League campaign by any Brazilian, a mark shared with Roberto Firmino.<\/p>\n
Slot turned to Cody Gakpo in Ekitik\u00e9\u2019s absence for the Fulham match. Gakpo had often been used through the middle under J\u00fcrgen Klopp and has endured spells without goals. Ronald Koeman has put some of that inconsistency down to role and positioning. \u201cFirst, his position is on the left side,\u201d Koeman said during Euro 2024. \u201cBecause he is really dangerous if he comes one-against-one with the right full-back. Inside, outside, he has his qualities, he\u2019s strong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Slot first noticed Gakpo\u2019s wide qualities when they were opponents in the Dutch top flight. Last weekend\u2019s meeting with Fulham was the first of Gakpo\u2019s 51 starts for Slot as a centre forward. The 26-year-old bundled in a late goal but struggled for much of a stodgy contest.<\/p>\n
With Alexander Isak nowhere near a return from his broken leg and Ekitik\u00e9 potentially still sidelined, Gakpo may again be asked to occupy a central role in which he has never appeared fully comfortable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Slot admits Ekitik\u00e9 has not trained and may miss Liverpool’s trip to Arsenal at the Emirates today..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5807,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,175,172],"tags":[299,872],"class_list":["post-5808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-liverpool","category-epl","tag-arne-slot","tag-cody-gakpo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5808","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=5808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}