For the hosts, Alisson Becker, Federico Chiesa, Harvey Elliott and Diogo Jota are ruled out of Saturday’s 8pm GMT kick-off in the Premier League.
Slot was asked for an update on Jota during his pre-match press conference on Friday and stated that the forward – who has missed the Reds’ last five matches after sustaining an injury against Chelsea last month – is expected to be available again ‘one or two weeks after the international break’.
Villa, meanwhile, will be without midfielder Ross Barkley in L4, and defender Matty Cash also missed their Champions League loss at Club Brugge on Wednesday.
Youri Tielemans is not part of Belgium’s squad for the international window that follows this game, but the visitors are hopeful he will play on Merseyside.
“Tielemans is expected to be fit to face the Reds this weekend before using the international period as rehabilitation,” their official website reported of the midfielder’s ‘minor complaint’.
Liverpool head coach Slot told the media that he is not anticipating Emery to spring a tactical surprise, but previous experiences this season mean he will not take that opinion for granted.
“If you ask me now I would say it’s not that difficult [to predict how Villa will play] because Unai Emery has played in a similar style now for years at Aston Villa,” Slot said.
“It’s almost always the same formation, but it sometimes depends on the player that you can have different characteristics, but his style of play, his idea about football, has been the same always.
“Saying this, that also was the situation with Xabi Alonso, who we studied for I don’t know how many games but never once did he come up with the idea of playing [Victor] Boniface as a left winger and playing without a No.9 [for Bayer Leverkusen on Tuesday].
“That he hadn’t done at all before we played them, but that’s maybe also a compliment – most managers feel that we have a very good team so they think they have to change their game plan, not their playing style, a bit.
“If you ask me now do I expect Unai to change a lot, I would not expect that because he never did this, not if he played [Manchester] City and also not when he played Liverpool in the past few years.
“But in terms of personnel he can change a bit, he has different options in the full-back [areas]different options on the wings, but it’s also been a 4-4-2 that he’s been playing for many years now.”
Alexis Mac Allister goes into this weekend one yellow card away from receiving a one-match suspension in the Premier League.
