The Reds are back in league action on Saturday night when they meet Unai Emery’s in-form side at Anfield.
Read on to see what Slot had to say in his session with reporters at the AXA Training Centre…
On how he is ‘trying to solve the problems with injuries and the number of games’…
Just handling the situation as it is. Let me use Alex [Isak] as an example, he had to do his pre-season inside the season and people can then argue, ‘Why do you play him?’ But if I don’t play him, I don’t have him available and we need to have him available, because otherwise I have to play Hugo [Ekitike] every single game. And I was just with Owen Hargreaves when he made the comparison between the two of them and he showed that one played 34 games last season, the other one 34 – and we play 60 over here. So, that’s why I need to get Alex as soon as I can into playing as many games as he can.
That has been something not only with him but with a few others as well. Jeremie Frimpong has been in and out with injuries quite a few times, same with Conor Bradley. So if one is out, the other one has to play more – that’s why I’ve played Dominik Szoboszlai a few times in that position. That has been something what every team, by the way, has, so it’s again not an excuse for us because every team works with this. But what was a bit different, for example, for me [to] last season is that last season they all had one year [of] Premier League experience as a minimum and they were fit when we started and they stayed fit.
And now, they weren’t all fit from the start and some players have to play maybe even more than you want them to do, which is a risk for them getting injured as well. But it’s just the situation as it is and we have still more than enough good players available to play the game on Saturday, to play the game on Tuesday and to play the game on Sunday. But I have to take care of a few of them and that’s why I made the decision not to play seven or eight players two days ago.
On how much he is learning about himself during this run…
Maybe learning comes a little bit later because now you are mainly focused on, ‘How can I change?’ And you always evaluate the decisions you’ve made and the choices you’ve made or the things you’ve done afterwards. My focus is now not so much on trying to look back on what has happened but more on, ‘How can we get a very good performance on Saturday?’ So yeah, maybe the learning part is going to come a little bit later. But now the focus is on the future and is on, ‘How can we get a good result or at least a good performance against Villa?’ Because normally a good performance from these quality players leads to a good result.
On the factors that will help Liverpool get back on track and him being disappointed with the performance at Brentford…
Yeah, for 60 minutes. Thirty minutes was OK. I think the first half against [Crystal] Palace was also similar to that 60 minutes that I was talking about. The thing that gives me the most confidence is the quality of the players we have and the amount of chances these players are still creating. This will eventually always lead to these players scoring more goals than we’ve done until now. And we have to address certain other things but if I talk about that, if I’m speaking about what we have to improve, people then tell me I’m using excuses. So, maybe it’s better now just to say we need to address certain things to do better. But there are a lot of positives to go into this week as well. Like I said, the quality of players is the first and foremost and the amount of chances we create from open play is still good enough to compete for the positions we want to compete for.
