Arne Slot has been Liverpool discussing his team selection for this Saturday's Premier League clash at home to Anfield
Arne Slot may be forced to make changes for his Liverpool team against Southampton
Arne Slot may be forced to make changes for his Liverpool team against Southampton
Arne Slot has hinted he might make changes against Southampton on Saturday - but insisted any Liverpool rotation would have nothing to do with the Champions League second leg against Paris Saint-Germain. The Reds won the first leg 1-0 in Paris on Wednesday and will look to get the better of the Ligue 1 outfit again at Anfield next Tuesday as they look to progress to the quarter-finals.
Liverpool’s substitutes impressed against PSG with Harvey Elliott scoring a late winner with his first touch after being played in by fellow substitute Darwin Nunez.
Given the quick turnaround, Slot conceded he might consider making changes against Southampton for this weekend's top-versus-bottom Premier League clash.
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But the Reds head coach insisted that he would have been tempted to stick with the same starting XI, despite the impact of his substitutes, if it hadn’t been for Saturday’s game coming in quick succession as he explained his reasoning when he rotates his side.
“For me, the one against Southampton is by far the most important,” Slot said, whose team follow the second leg against PSG with the Carabao Cup final against Newcastle United on Sunday week (March 16). “Not only because it is the first one we play, but it is a very, very important one for us.
“If - IF - I make the choice to play other players, that is because I think it is the biggest chance to win the game tomorrow and not because I want to rest them for the game against Paris Saint-Germain.
“The only way I make a change is because it’s maybe only two days in between. I might feel that playing someone else is a better choice because we have many players of equal quality.
“But that then only has to do with us getting a bigger chance of winning the game against Southampton than it has anything to do with the Paris Saint-Germain game. You do know what to expect from Paris Saint-Germain, you do know what to expect from Newcastle. But for me, the most important game is the one against Southampton.
“If there would be three, four or five days between the last game and this one, I would have probably started the same XI again - even if there was only two days in between for the next one.
“But since there are only two days in between and we had to fight really hard, and it’s not the first game after three or four weeks out, it’s probably the 50th game, so you take that into account.
“But you take the quality from the team you face, you take the form of the players, you take how fit they are, which players fit best together.
“If you look at…, we started with Lucho (Diaz) and Diogo (Jota), Diogo is a type of player, nine-and-a-half for me almost, he’s almost a midfielder as a striker, and then I finished the game with Curtis (Jones) who is a midfielder from the left and Darwin (Nunez) who is more of a real nine.
“These are the combinations you look at, depending on the opposition and the formation of the other team.
“The good thing for us is that Southampton has the same formation if they have the ball that Paris Saint-Germain has so we need to do much better without the ball, to press Southampton, than we did against Paris Saint-Germain.”
Meanwhile, Slot conceded that the likes of Elliott are worthy of more game-time as he explained why the midfielder has been limited to a bit-part role this season.
“I see the advantages of playing mostly with the same team because they get used to each other so that helps,” he said. “But I am also aware of the fact you cannot play a season with 11 players so that’s why you sometimes saw players rotating.
“And I don’t do this with 20 or 25, but mostly with 14 or 15 if possible. The other ones don’t always get the playing-time they deserve.
“I think Harvey Elliott is a great example of that. He’s done so well for this club. He trains well but he is in competition with Mo Salah and Dominik Szoboszlai.
“Now, I don’t think Mo was happy that I took him off five minutes before the end if I looked at his body language. There is a reason for that because he is a player who can score a goal for us, even if he is not even playing his best game. That’s why I hardly take him off.
“Now I did and Dominik Szoboszlai, you could call him a machine. Every time you play him on the pitch, he is the one who runs most.
“That’s what makes it sometimes hard for Harvey. That’s why I liked it so much how he did when he came in, only five minutes.
“Some players are frustrated if they only get five minutes but in our team that has never happened. Maybe once or twice, but in general it has never happened.”
Slot continued: “To be clear, that is not the headline that Mo was frustrated! I could see that he would prefer me not to take him off, but his behaviour was completely normal. He shook hands.
“He probably thought, ‘maybe there was one chance to come and I will score that one’. To be fair to him, he always does that!
“People now say good substitution because Harvey scored. I think if I asked him, he would tell me, ‘if I had been there, I would have scored the same goal as well!’
“He had a completely normal reaction. I think all of them show great character and that is what we need tomorrow against Southampton.”