Arne Slot defended his choice to leave Hugo Ekitik\u00e9 among the substitutes as Liverpool fell 3\u20132 at Bournemouth, saying the decision was driven by squad management rather than form. The Dutch coach described the call as precautionary after the striker had missed time recently and with a congested schedule approaching.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs you could see in our line-up, I decided not to play Hugo [Ekitike]. That was not because I didn’t like him or he wasn’t good against Marseille , it was simply because I only have one No.9 available for the upcoming weeks and months,\u201d Slot argued in his post-match presser. \u201cHe was out two weeks ago and with so many games to play, you have to manage his minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ekitik\u00e9 did enter the game in the 59th minute, replacing Alexis Mac Allister. At that point Bournemouth led 2\u20131 after early strikes from Evanilson and David Jim\u00e9nez. Virgil van Dijk had reduced the deficit with a header just before half-time, and Dominik Szoboszlai later rifled home a free-kick to level at 2\u20132, giving Liverpool hope of turning the match.<\/p>\n
The visitors ultimately conceded in stoppage time when a long throw from James Hill sparked a scramble in the penalty area and Amine Adli found a late winner. Slot voiced the immediate frustration: \u201cFrustrating, of course, because conceding a goal is always frustrating but especially if there’s no time left to come back into the game,\u201d Slot bemoaned. \u201cI think it’s safe to say they could have scored the 3-2 also a little bit earlier and what I mean with that is I think after we scored the 2-2, we were still trying but I think it’s safe to say a few players of ours ran out of energy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI cannot even criticise them for that because two days ago we had to play an away game in Europe. We are the only team that played [in the] Champions League that has two days between in this time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Liverpool now face three important fixtures over the next fortnight and could drop as low as sixth in the Premier League depending on other results, but Slot made clear his selection was aimed at preserving his lone centre forward for the busiest period ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Slot said he benched Hugo Ekitik\u00e9 to manage minutes; the striker came on in the 59th minute at 3\u20132.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6225,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[739,175,172],"tags":[1305,1304,1047],"class_list":["post-6226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bournemouth","category-liverpool","category-epl","tag-bench-selection","tag-benching","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6226","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=6226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}