Florian Wirtz was set to start for Liverpool against Nottingham Forest on Sunday but was forced into a late withdrawal after picking up an injury in the warmup. Forest were preparing to face this reinvigorated version of the German international until the late problem prompted his swift removal from the team sheet.<\/p>\n
Curtis Jones was chosen to replace Wirtz directly in Arne Slot\u2019s 4-2-3-1. Jones, a player whose senior career has been spent shaving off the edges of his natural attacking instincts, took the vacant role behind the striker. Within seconds of kickoff, he gave up possession after dallying on the ball.<\/p>\n
Starting XI (4-2-3-1): Alisson; Dominik Szoboszlai, Ibrahima Konat\u00e9, Virgil van Dijk, Milos Kerkez; Ryan Gravenberch, Alexis Mac Allister; Mohamed Salah, Curtis Jones, Cody Gakpo; Hugo Ekitik\u00e9.<\/p>\n
Substitutes: Freddie Woodman (GK), Giorgi Mamardashvili (GK), Andy Robertson, Calvin Ramsay, Joe Gomez, Trey Nyoni, Federico Chiesa, Kieran Morrison, Rio Ngumoha.<\/p>\n
Slot already came into Liverpool\u2019s trip to the City Ground with a right back dilemma. The Liverpool boss had confirmed pre-game that he would remain without Jeremie Frimpong for at least another week, which in turn took away the most natural Wirtz replacement.<\/p>\n
The change forced an immediate tactical adjustment and handed Jones a chance to influence a match for which the manager had prepared without one of his preferred full-back options. The late alteration to the lineup underlined the uncertainty that a single warmup injury can create for selection and match planning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wirtz withdrawn late after warmup injury; Curtis Jones replaces him as Liverpool travel to Forest..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7019,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,298,969],"tags":[299,1305],"class_list":["post-7020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-nottingham-forest","category-premier-league","tag-arne-slot","tag-bench-selection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7020","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=7020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}