After heavily rotating his squad during the Carabao Cup clash loss to Palace in midweek, the Dutch coach had claimed that he was forced to use youngsters to keep his first-choice senior players free from injury as he told Sky Sports: “Everybody can have [their] opinion about it but with the squad we have – maybe 15, 16 first-team players available – this is the choice I’ve made. It’s not of Liverpool’s standards to lose five out of six, or six out of seven. Last time we played Southampton here in the League Cup, Giovanni Leoni got injured, and we don’t have such a big squad as people might tell, because there was so much focus on the amount of money we spent [in the summer].
“People all of a sudden think we have 25 players available, but we mainly have 20 players then we have four injuries. I only have one right full-back, Conor Bradley, as an example, and every time I had to play him twice in three days or three times in seven days [last season], it led to him… that I had to take him off with a hamstring injury or something else. Are you willing to take that risk with such a big week coming up? Last time I played a player that wasn’t fully prepared – we thought he was prepared but it was the first time – Alexander Isak, he got injured.”
However, in his latest statement, Slot mentioned: “We miss nothing. I am completely happy with the team and with all the quality that we have.”