Arne Slot reveals new Liverpool injury blow after surprise development | OneFootball

Reds hit by fresh fitness setback ahead of Champions League win over Marseille

Arne Slot has explained why Federico Chiesa was a late withdrawal from the Liverpool squad to face Marseille.

Such a seemingly unexpected absence left Liverpool with only four senior outfield players on the bench in Cody Gakpo, Wataru Endo, Andy Robertson and Curtis Jones, who were joined by youngsters Rio Ngumoha and Trey Nyoni plus goalkeepers Giorgi Mamardashvili and Freddie Woodman.

The Reds remained without long-term absentees Alexander Isak, Conor Bradley and Giovanni Leoni, while Ibrahima Konate was not involved either due to family reasons as Joe Gomez stepped in to partner captain Virgil van Dijk at centre-back.

Explaining Chiesa’s situation after a valuable 3-0 win over Marseille that lifted Liverpool up to fourth in the Champions League table with only one game remaining in the league phase, at home to Azerbaijani side Qarabag next week, Slot revealed that the Italian forward had actually picked up a knock in training on Tuesday just after the portion of the session that was open to the media.

"Two or three minutes after you guys left yesterday, he stepped out of the training session,” the Liverpool boss told reporters. "We took him with us because we don't expect it to be a long-term injury.

"Because we stay here tonight, we are here a bit longer. We thought it was good for him to have his treatment over here and we were hoping that maybe he would have been fit in time. But he wasn't.

"He tried in the warm-up and he wasn't able to play. That's why he wasn't on the bench."

The win in Marseille was particularly notable for the return of Mohamed Salah, who made his first start for Liverpool since the 4-1 humiliation by PSV Eindhoven in November after returning from Africa Cup of Nations duty with Egypt in Morocco.

Assessing his return, Slot said: “It helps he is already for so long with us so he knows his team-mates and he knows how we want to play.

“It says a lot about how big of a professional he is that being away from us for a month in a different team, he was so fit to play 90 today. He was close to a goal, a good ball from Cody and usually that’s a goal for him.

“Tonight it wasn’t but it didn’t harm us because we scored three. I think overall, I saw a lot of very good individual performances as I saw against Arsenal, as I saw against Burnley and as I saw tonight.

The one I want to take out [and highlight] is Joe Gomez because he hasn't played a lot in the last one-and-a-half years. He suffered sometimes from injuries, sometimes I didn’t play him when he was fit.

“A few times when he played were moments in League Cup and FA Cup. Tonight he had an outstanding performance with an important role in our 3-0.”

On Konate’s absence ahead of the game, Slot said: “No, first of all for the family matter, why he is not here, it is very sad for him.

“Second of all, we miss him because I mainly played him [Van Dijk]... Joe is a good replacement but not played much in the one-and-a-half year that I have been here, for obvious reasons.

"But it's a great game for him, he's not played a lot. He has showed that he can build a great partnership with Virgil, winning the Premier League under Jurgen [Klopp] five years ago now. He's shown he can be a really good player for us.”