Liverpool manager Arne Slot cited squad rotation as the reason behind Mohamed Salah’s shock omission for Tuesday’s Champions League clash with Galatasaray.
It was the first time since October 2022 that Salah has been named as a substitute for a Champions League match. Over the subsequent 14 consecutive starts, Liverpool’s perennial talisman racked up seven goals and as many assists.
“Mo has played a lot of minutes already, so we decided to do it like this today and in the first half I was quite happy,” Slot explained in the steamy aftermath of a 1–0 loss. Despite playing the full 90 minutes of Saturday’s defeat to Crystal Palace, Salah had been rested for last week’s Carabao Cup clash with Southampton.
Liverpool fall to their second defeat in four days.
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Last season, it took them until January to lose two games. pic.twitter.com/gkqASN2a4K
“We have many games to play in the coming days, we have a big game coming up, we have to utilise our squad, and utilising doesn’t always mean from the start,” the Dutch boss told Prime Sport before the fixture.
“Players can come in as well. In many of our games, players have impacted the game coming off the bench,” Slot argued. “And indeed they were talking about the last time Mo scored three coming off the bench against Rangers. And I know who the manager of Rangers was. That is my current assistant, Gio [van Bronckhorst]. So they’ve spoken about this already.”
That jolly tone had long since been lost by the end of Liverpool’s second successive defeat.
How Galatasaray Unravelled Slot’s Grand Plans
Jeremie Frimpong was tasked with filling Salah’s boots in Istanbul. More familiarly deployed on the right-hand side of Liverpool’s back four this season, the Netherlands international does have experience in more attacking positions.
“Jeremie played a lot of times as a wingback or a right winger at [Bayer] Leverkusen,” Slot argued after Tuesday’s defeat. “He played there in preseason for us. He is one of the players that can replace Mo [Salah] in that position. I don’t see many others that can play in that position which is favoured to them, and I think it is one of Jeremie’s favourite positions. He plays there for the national team always.”
Without Federico Chiesa to call upon and while Conor Bradley is still being eased back from an injury-riddled summer, Slot plumped for Dominik Szoboszlai in Frimpong’s vacated right back slot.
The Dutch tactican outlined the thinking behind this unexpected switch: “Normally, normally, normally they [Galatasaray] play with the left winger inverted and the fullback really high. So, the left winger goes in the midfield and Dom is in the midfield and Jeremie is some kind of a wingback.” It didn’t quite play out like that.
“They did it the opposite today,” Slot sighed, “which happens more to us that they change something.”
Galatasaray’s left winger Barış Alper Yılmaz, driving infield from out wide, tangled with an unwitting Szoboszlai in the box inside the opening 15 minutes, winning a penalty which Victor Osimhen for the only goal of the game.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Reason Revealed for Mohamed Salah’s Champions League Streak Ending.
