Arne Slot has some tricky decisions to make on his team selections as injuries start to bite the Liverpool squad during a crucial period of the season.
Liverpool sit second in the Premier League table and have emerged as a real contender to win the league alongside Manchester City and Arsenal in the early part of the campaign.
However, Slot will have to think hard about his selections in the coming weeks as injuries start to have an effect on the squad in the coming weeks.
Liverpool are missing Alisson Becker, Harvey Elliott, Federico Chiesa and Diogo Jota from their squad and none of them are expected to return to action before the end of the November international break.
The club are also keeping tabs on left-back options in the market despite having Kostas Tsimikas and Andy Robertson as neither of them has been a regular in the team.
However, Slot has defended his decision to rotate his left-backs and indicated that it has nothing to do with their quality.
Arne Slot talks about his left-back ‘dilemma’
Slot has continued to chop-and-changed at left-back with Tsimikas and Robertson coming in and out of the team since the start of the season.
The Liverpool manager pointed out that he has been rotating players in other areas of his squad but insisted that the left-back rotation is down to a very specific reason.
He stressed that Robertson missed pre-season due to an injury so he had to work towards building up the Scotsman’s fitness, which meant he was never going to play every game.
Can you name the club Liverpool signed these players from?
Slot believes it is good that Robertson’s game time is being managed and indicated that the defender will start the fixture against Brighton at Anfield on Saturday.
“I wouldn’t say a dilemma”, he said in a press conference.
“It is in more positions where we’ve rotated, so you’re maybe a bit focused on the left full-back position, but the left wing has been in rotation, the midfield we’ve rotated, the No. 9 position we’ve rotated.
“It probably also has to do with Robbo’s pre-season. He had no pre-season because he came back injured from the Euros.
“He missed almost a complete pre-season, which was for most of them only two weeks but for him, it was only a few days.
“Kostas did really well in that period of time, so it has to do with the quality Kostas brings in the position, but it definitely also has to do with Robbo missing pre-season.
“That’s why we started rotating from the start of it because if a player didn’t have any pre-season there was no time to bring him to the situation where he can play three games in a row.
“We try to build up our players for that programme and for him, that was difficult because he missed out on pre-season while others were there.
“That’s his situation. I think it was good for him to play Arsenal and now again the game against Brighton during the week.
“That makes sure that he’s getting into that rhythm of playing twice a week.”
