Liverpool remain top of the Premier League table, with five successive victories seeing the reigning champions of England get off to a perfect start. They did, however, require a number of late goals to keep that winning run intact. Slot eventually saw the wheels fall off when suffering a 2-1 loss at Crystal Palace. Said setback was followed by another in European competition.
A Victor Osimhen penalty condemned Liverpool to a 1-0 reversal in Istanbul, with the Reds struggling to find an attacking spark. Some of the blame for that is being placed at Slot’s door. He opted to field Hungarian midfielder Dominik Szoboszlai as a right-back again – where he has filled in at times this season – with Jeremie Frimpong operating on the wing. Szoboszlai ended up conceding the decisive spot-kick.
Slot is facing accusations of trying to be too creative and clever with his selections. Amorim has faced similar criticism across his time in charge of Manchester United, with the Portuguese desperate to make his favoured 3-4-3 system work despite positive results proving hard to come by.
A Red Devils legend has told The Wayne Rooney Show podcast of why Slot should be facing some uncomfortable questions of his own: “I thought they [Liverpool] were really poor. I think the worry for me would be, they’re losing the game and it looked like even with still quite a bit of time left to go, he just put every attacking player on the pitch and said like ‘go and figure it out’. And then, it could have got a lot worse for Liverpool during the game because with the amount of times they gave the ball away at the back and losing it and getting broke on and Alisson getting injured.
“I think when you win the league like Arne Slot did with Liverpool last season then sometimes some of the decisions you make get overlooked. I think his decision to play a midfield player at right-back and a right-back and right-wing. For instance, if that was Amorim at Manchester United, he’d get absolutely slaughtered.”
Slot explained the decision to shuffle his pack in Turkey when telling reporters: “What you see is, and I think I explained this many times, is that there are a few players from us that missed pre-season so you simply cannot play them every single [game]. Well, you can but then that could become a risk of players becoming injured. We have seen this more and more because the demands go up more and more, and if the demands go up you have to prepare players for these demands.
“That means that it is not always that I want to rotate but sometimes I need to because a player is not ready to play three times 90 minutes in seven or eight days. I like my squad so much, but we don’t have 25 or 26 [players], so if we end up with two, three or four injuries, 15 or 16 players, where Rio and Trey are two of these 15 or 16, then need to play almost all the minutes and then things can become complicated.
“But this is a decision we have made together, I completely believe in this, because if you have 25 [players] it’s very hard to manage your squad. But as a result of that, with Hugo, Alex, Conor and Mac Allister not having the pre-season a player should have, that also results in the fact that I cannot play them every time.”
Liverpool will be back in domestic action on Saturday when taking in a testing trip to Chelsea. A number of their players will then head off with their respective countries during the international break, with the Reds welcoming Amorim and United to Anfield on October 19.
