Liverpool coach Arne Slot has already left his mark on the history of the club and the Premier League, having won ten wins in twelve matches in the English top flight, equaling the records of Gus Hiddink and Carlo Ancelotti. Ahead of the Champions League clash against Ancelotti’s current team Real Madrid, the Reds’ Dutch coach spoke about the challenging injury situation within his squad: key players such as Alisson, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Diogo Jota, Federico Chiesa and Kostas Tsimikas are out of action, as reported by the Merseyside club’s official website.
– In an ideal world, we wouldn’t be able to count on Trent, but if absolutely necessary, Alexander-Arnold could play a few minutes, but nothing more than that – and he definitely won’t start. Federico Chiesa is currently unavailable, although he is training with the team, it is mainly for one or two segments of the session. Harvey Elliott has recovered and is training with the group, but having not played in any major competitive matches for a long time – he is not ready to start. Alisson and Diogo Jota remain unavailable; Kostas Tsimikas suffered an injury – our list of problems is not small. To add to our woes, Ibrahima Konaté and Alexis Mac Allister are under threat of suspension for the upcoming match against Girona away from home – should they receive a yellow card against Real. It’s also challenging for us to predict what to expect from our opponents – all we know is that Real will field eleven high-quality players. It stands to reason that such a good team has eleven great players, and we will do our best to prepare our own players for this challenge. If Vinícius was fit, I would have a better idea of Real’s lineup – he played in almost every game, but now we should expect something different. The opponent now has many options, which makes it much more difficult for us to understand what Real are planning – will Bellingham play on the left, or move to the right, or will Jude play as the ‘number ten’? Arda Güler will start or Endrick will take the field – perhaps this will all come as a surprise to us.
Swiss
