Arne Slot names one way Liverpool got “lucky” last season | OneFootball

Slot guided the Reds to an impressive Premier League title victory in his first season in charge, but he’s suffered a much tougher start to his second campaign at Anfield.

It perhaps now looks like Liverpool got a bit lucky last season as both Arsenal and Manchester City suffered a dip in their performances, partly due to having injuries to key players themselves.

Liverpool, by contrast, managed to keep their key names fit for pretty much the entire campaign, though they’re now having worse luck in that department.

Arne Slot on Liverpool’s bad luck with injuries

Slot has attempted to explain some of Liverpool’s poor results and performances this season, though he insists he’s not trying to make excuses for his team.

See below as the Dutch tactician insists it’s simply trickier having more players out injured, limiting his options whilst also putting more pressure on others to play more often, even with games every few days…

“If you could talk about an issue … not all of them have had a proper pre-season, or have been injured during the season,” Slot said.

“So when three or four are injured you go back to 16 players. I’m a firm believer in the fact that 20-21 players are enough, but you have to keep them fit as we did last season.”

He added: “It has been more difficult than last season to keep them all available. Maybe last season we were more lucky or now we’re more unlucky.

Arne Slot shouting instructions during Liverpool’s defeat to Crystal Palace (Photo by Molly Darlington/Getty Images)

“Again, no excuses for our results before people are going to say this again, but we had to play a lot of away games with only two days of rest in between.”

Can Liverpool bounce back?

Liverpool will no doubt hope to have a better chance of getting points on the board once everyone’s back available again, but do their problems lie deeper than that?

The Merseyside giants were conceding a lot of goals even before Alisson Becker’s injury, while summer signings Jeremie Frimpong and Milos Kerkez have simply not looked good enough since joining.

Florian Wirtz also had a full pre-season and no fitness concerns, but has badly struggled to live up to his price tag so far.