Arne Slot has said that he was forced into altering his plans to give three Liverpool players more game-time than they received during the FA Cup defeat to Plymouth Argyle on Sunday.
The Reds boss fielded a heavily rotated starting XI for the fourth-round clash at Home Park and omitted a number of first-team regulars in favour of a youthful substitutes’ bench, a selection gamble which backfired and was branded as ‘disrespectful’ in some quarters.
Joe Gomez started but was forced off with injury inside the first 10 minutes, while Darwin Nunez was introduced with just over half an hour remaining and Curtis Jones was in the matchday squad but didn’t make it onto the pitch.
Slot frustrated over enforced changes of plan for Liverpol trio
Addressing the media at his press conference this morning ahead of tomorrow night’s Merseyside derby, Slot revealed that he’d wanted to give those three players substantially more game-time on Sunday, only for a variety of circumstances to scupper his plans.
The Dutchman said (via Liverpool Echo): “The plan was to play with Joe for 60 minutes. The plan was to start Curtis but he didn’t feel well enough to play. Darwin became a dad one or two days before the game. That happened in Spain and he came in one or two days earlier.
“We wanted to play with a stronger team. The fact that we didn’t win shows that these players need these games. It makes it disappointing that we don’t have these extra games for them.”
(Photo by Carl Recine/Getty Images)
Slot will still need his whole squad to step up this month and beyond
Although some journalists and pundits have put a positive spin on Liverpool’s FA Cup exit by claiming that having fewer commitments will enhance their Premier League title hopes, Slot was evidently annoyed to have gone out of the former competition.
With everything to play for in each fixture that the Reds will have for the rest of the season, scope for rotation will be limited, which could make it harder for first-team players who haven’t started regularly to get the minutes that the head coach would like to hand them.
Despite that, an unforgiving run of five top-flight matches in 15 days – beginning with tomorrow night’s derby – means that the LFC boss will be reliant on those not in the starting XI to make an important contribution so that he can make personnel changes without affecting the quality of the team on the pitch.
Thankfully Liverpool’s injury list is brief at the moment, with Joe Gomez and Tyler Morton the only confirmed absentees for the Everton game as Trent Alexander-Arnold is due to train today and could potentially feature at Goodison Park.
Although we know (by and large) the composition of Slot’s preferred XI by now, he’ll be counting on everyone in his squad to be ready to play their part throughout a daunting February schedule and into the final three months of the season.
The post ‘We wanted…’ – Arne Slot was forced into a change of plan with Liverpool trio for FA Cup defeat appeared first on The Empire of The Kop.
