Hugo Ekitik\u00e9 was missing from Liverpool\u2019s matchday squad for the second game running as the Reds travelled to face Premier League leaders at the Emirates Stadium on Thursday night. The striker has been Liverpool\u2019s most productive signing from the 2025 summer window, having cost \u00a379 million (106.1 million) to prise away from Eintracht Frankfurt and already scoring 11 times in a Liverpool shirt across all competitions.<\/p>\n
That total includes five goals in his last five Premier League appearances, a run that has been particularly important in a season made more difficult by Alexander Isak\u2019s struggles and his subsequent broken leg. Despite his form, Ekitik\u00e9 was withdrawn from selection because of delayed onset muscle soreness, otherwise known as DOMS, believed to be affecting his hamstring.<\/p>\n
Ekitik\u00e9 did travel to London, with reports saying he did not receive scan results until he was on the plane, and he ultimately did not feature. When Arne Slot answered media questions on Wednesday morning, he explained that Ekitik\u00e9 had not trained with the rest of the Liverpool squad all week up to that point, the day before the game.<\/p>\n
Before kick-off the expectation was that Cody Gakpo would continue to deputise in the No. 9 role, but Liverpool\u2019s starting shape saw Gakpo on the left while Florian Wirtz, who had played in the No. 10 position against Fulham, pushed up as a ‘false nine’ instead.<\/p>\n
Slot indicated the issue is not a major injury. He suggested that, had Liverpool not been playing every few days, Ekitik\u00e9\u2019s return to full training and match action might have come sooner. With preparations tightly packed around fixtures, opportunities to rejoin sessions are limited and that has kept the striker out for now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ekitik\u00e9 was absent with DOMS; he traveled to London but did not feature as Wirtz played ‘false nine’ Thu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5863,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,175,969],"tags":[195,1305],"class_list":["post-5864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-liverpool","category-premier-league","tag-alexander-isak","tag-bench-selection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5864","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=5864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}