Oliver Glasner said it would have been ‘disrespectful’ for Crystal Palace to underestimate Liverpool after Arne Slot named a heavily rotated line-up for their Carabao Cup tie.
The Eagles beat the Premier League champions for the third time this season to knock them out of the Carabao Cup on Wednesday night, winning 3-0 at Anfield to condemn the struggling Reds to their sixth loss in their last seven matches.
Slot is under increasing pressure to find solutions as the dismal run drags on, and came in for criticism after making ten changes to his squad for the tie. He named a handful of academy youngsters to the lineup alongside first-team regulars Alexis Mac Allister, Joe Gomez, Andy Robertson, and Milos Kerkez.
Virgil van Dijk, Mohamed Salah, Florian Wirtz, Dominik Szoboszlai and Hugo Ekitike were all rested, and, speaking at full-time, Slot hinted his squad is struggling to deal with the demands of a busy match schedule.
“If I look at our performance against Brentford, to use that as an example, two days after we played Frankfurt away, I saw there a team that maybe struggled with playing three games in seven days,” he said.
Glasner has countered those comments, though, pointing out the rotated Liverpool squad still featured considerable quality.
He said: "[The line-up] was Arne Slot's decision and we never care what other teams are doing. We told the players, but it would be disrespectful to all their players.
“I've seen Joe Gomez play for England, win the Champions League, seen Wataru Endo I don't know how many games for Japan, I've seen Alexis Mac Allister, he won the World Cup as a starter, Kerkez moved for £40m, [Federico] Chiesa plays for the [Italy] national team, Ngumoha has shown he can score goals in the Premier League.
"It was still a good team and everyone is a member of the Liverpool squad.
“I was never good enough to be in the Liverpool squad. Maybe it was not the strongest team, but still a very good Liverpool side."
