Arne Slot could hardly have wished for anything more from the first four months or so of his time at Liverpool but the fixtures keep coming fast and thick for the Reds, with Aston Villa next up at the weekend in the Premier League.
That is the final match before the upcoming international break and Slot will be hoping for a fourth straight victory in all competitions, which would make it six wins and one draw across a run of games many saw as being a big test of the team’s title credentials after a perceived easier run at the start of the campaign.
Slot has made sure to tweak his team for games to keep his squad fresh of late, with midweek seeing Liverpool hammer Bayer Leverkusen in the Champions League after a couple of such changes, including Luis Diaz playing at centre-forward – where he scored twice from and netted three times on the night in total.
One position which didn’t feature an alteration for the match though came at left-back, where Kostas Tsimikas started for the third time in the last five games and seems to have perhaps edged ahead of Andy Robertson as the current first choice.
The Dutch head coach says he’s glad to have both to choose from and insists team selection in the position is more about energy levels and fitness rather than any specific pecking order.
“My lineups tell you what I think about this. We have two very good full-backs and we play many, many games,” he said ahead of the visit of Aston Villa.
“Both need their games because it’s a position where a lot of effort is being asked, the players who have played most games is the centre-backs who don’t run the most compared to full-backs or wingers. So there are multiple reasons why our full-backs or midfielders are sometimes rotated. But it has also to do with quality of players, I have two very good left full-backs and Kostas has started a few times. Let’s see who starts Saturday.”
Up front is likely to be the other selection dilemma for Slot against Villa, with Diogo Jota still sidelined until “one or two weeks after the international break”, and Darwin Nunez not quite yet hitting the same standards as others in the front line.
Diaz’s hat-trick against Leverkusen raises the prospect of him starting in the central position again but Slot acknowledged it would be more usual to turn to a natural striker again when available.
“It depends also on the availability of players. When we had Darwin and Diogo available we always played one of those two,” he said. “When Diogo was not and Darwin didn’t play the first games it was too much for him so we came up with other ideas.
“To be honest I liked especially the last idea, every Liverpool fan liked Lucho scoring three goals! One as a left winger. That’s always interesting to see. We have four attackers for three positions at this moment so we could come up with another idea but if Diogo comes back, Darwin is back, we have two No9s again.
“But Lucho did really well and it was even for me a bit of a surprise to see how well he did. I expected he’d do good but that he did so well was even a surprise for me.”
Slot was additionally asked again about his three out of contract star players for summer – Mohamed Salah, Virgil van Dijk and Trent Alexander-Arnold – but again said discussions were with sporting director Richard Hughes and would remain internal.
“It would be strange if I have no input. In general contract situations are talked about by the people who should talk about them. I talk about this with Richard and that’s where it should be, not in front of a microphone.”