Arne Slot says he is not surprised that Liverpool are flying on all fronts just months after he replaced Jurgen Klopp as he prepares to rest some stars for their League Cup quarter-final against Southampton.
The Reds are top of the Premier League and the Champions League, with 19 wins in 23 games in all competitions so far. Slot said at Tuesday’s pre-match press conference that it was “normal for Liverpool to be fighting for every trophy and to be for a long time in every cup”.
“This happened last season when this club won this competition,” he said. “So I am not surprised that with the quality we have we are competing at this moment for these three trophies, and the fourth one (the FA Cup) is starting in January.” The Dutch manager, short of fit defenders, is set to rotate his players for Wednesday’s tie as he plans for a trip to Tottenham in the Premier League at the weekend.
He does not expect forward Diogo Jota, who scored as a substitute on his return from injury against Fulham, will be fit enough to start but Federico Chiesa could get some minutes for the first time since September. Caoimhin Kelleher will be back in goal, having recently impressed while deputising for Alisson Becker during his lay-off, and defender Kostas Tsimikas is nearing a return.
“I’m aware of the fact that we have only four defenders available and probably the ones that have started a lot of times will not play 90 minutes for sure and maybe not even at all,” said Slot. “So it’s going to be either academy players that are going to get playing time or it’s going to be players that nobody would expect to see in the last line that are going to play in the last line tomorrow.”
Slot must sit in the stands for Wednesday’s match on the south coast after collecting a third booking of the season against Fulham. The former Feyenoord boss is calmer on the sidelines than the expressive Klopp but he admitted he has “fire” inside him.
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“I don’t always think you have to show it to have that fire,” he said. “I think it’s clear that if you work at a club like this or around the world at a top club you do have this fire inside you that you want to win every game.”
In other News Sighted…
Van Dijk was on the Southampton side that knocked out Liverpool in the 2017 EFL Cup
Southampton host Liverpool this Wednesday (21:00) in the quarter-finals of the EFL Cup. The Saints, captained by Virgil van Dijk, knocked out the Reds in the semi-finals of the 2016-17 edition with a 0-2 aggregate win (1-0 at St. Mary’s Stadium and 0-1 at Anfield). Manchester United snatched the title on 26 February 2017 at Wembley.
Virgil van Dijk returns to St. Mary’s Stadium. The Liverpool captain knows the home of Southampton all too well. The one he called home between 2015, when he arrived from Celtic, and 2017, when the Reds came knocking on his door months after wiping him out in the EFL Cup.
The two paths cross again. This time, in the Cup quarter-finals. It so happens that the Dutch defender knows what it means to beat the team with which he made the leap in his professional career and leave them on the brink of a final wearing the armband that is now the enemy’s.
Eleven January 2017. Claude Puel’s Southampton beat Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool 1-0 with Nathan Redmond goal. The ‘17’ formed a defensive partnership with Maya Yoshida and they managed to dry the offensive creation of Roberto Firmino, Philippe Coutinho, Daniel Sturridge or Divock Origi.
In the second leg at Anfield, Shane Long made it 0-1 and 0-2 on aggregate. In the last meeting between Saints and Reds in the EFL Cup, Virgil van Dijk did not take part. Seven years later, history repeats itself with the protagonist on the other side.
