While we shouldn’t expect a vastly changed Liverpool side against Chelsea, Arne Slot has said he will use it to see how some of his fringe players are developing.
With the Premier League title mathematically secured, the question was posed to Slot of how he and his team will motivate themselves for Liverpool’s final four games of the season.
When learning that Man City‘s 19-gap in 2018 was the top flight’s biggest margin of victory – Liverpool are currently 15 ahead of Arsenal – Slot told press including the Liverpool Echo: “It’s interesting that you tell me this.
“I didn’t know. If I don’t know, I can’t use it. Now I might. But I don’t think that will light a fire in many players.
“What could help, we have to wait and see, but add one or two, maybe a bit more, players who haven’t played as much so that they can maybe create a certain new spirit.
“There’s no new spirit needed but you know what I mean. It’s two days before the game, mostly I come up with something in the last one or two days to try to get them going, but I haven’t thought about that much until now.”
The head coach was also asked if having the title secured could change the team’s approach to the match, to which he replied: “No tactical changes. You can’t change tactics because we were off two days, trained Wednesday, yesterday we were off, training two days now.
“So if we had three training sessions and changed tactics that would end up in a mess. If we would change something in terms of tactics then pre-season is the moment for that. But it could be, I don’t know yet.
“First of all we have to see how fit everyone is. If you ask me now what the line-up is I couldn’t tell you but I don’t know at the moment. We could maybe see a player in a certain position, what he does in that position combined with someone else.
“But like I said it is not going to be a big change, there’s not going to be seven or eight new starters. It’s going to be mostly the same and to see how a few players do in a difficult game like Chelsea away and where they are in their development.”
This could mean we see the likes of Harvey Elliott, Jarell Quansah and Wataru Endo starting, but as Slot alluded to, we shouldn’t expect complete rotation.
Conor Bradley is another who could return, having missed the win over Tottenham through injury, but he is unlikely to start as Slot said: “He will probably be back in the squad.”
While their rests may not all come at the same time, we expect that players such as Ryan Gravenberch and Ibrahima Konate, who have played more football than they are used to this season, will be rested to some extent in the final weeks of the season.
Slot may have a tough job dragging Mo Salah and Virgil van Dijk off the pitch, though!
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