Alisson injury compounds Slot's hellish trip to Turkey

Arne Slot says Liverpool number one Alisson Becker will miss Saturday's Premier League match at Chelsea after going off injured in the Champions League loss away to Galatasaray.

The Reds put in a disjointed display in Istanbul as their first Champions League trip of the campaign went the same way as Saturday's 2-1 loss to Crystal Palace.

Victor Osimhen's first-half penalty proved the difference in Tuesday's 1-0 league phase victory for Galatasaray, who were denied a second shortly after half-time by a smart Alisson save.

But the Brazil goalkeeper was unable to continue after denying Osimhen a second, leading to Giorgi Mamardashvili's 56th-minute introduction.

"When he sprinted back, he felt something," Liverpool boss Slot said of the Brazil international. "We have to wait.

"I cannot tell you (what happened) because I am not a physician but normally when a player sprints back, feels something and goes to the floor and doesn't come back on to the pitch - which by the way they did 112 times being injured and coming back on the pitch without any pain!

"But our players don't do this, so if my player is on the floor I nine out of 10 times fear the worst and with the worst I mean that he cannot continue and that is what happened with Alisson.

"Normally he will not be able to play Saturday, that is 99.9%."

"In the second half it became harder and harder for us to create."

Alisson was seen walking gingerly out of Rams Park, where striker Hugo Ekitike also limped off hurt in the second half.

"I wasn't really thinking that we had an injury, but Hugo felt something," Slot said. "After the game, that's always the difficult thing with these moments, then players feel like 'oh, it's not too bad'.

"But when you just walk around is something different to when you make a sprint and you have to shoot on target.

"He said he couldn't continue, so we had to take him off. Let's see how he is for the weekend."

The injuries compounded a disappointing evening in Turkey for the reigning Premier League champions, who will look to respond to these back-to-back defeats at Chelsea on Saturday.

"Disappointing because you play football to win a game and that is what we didn't do," Slot said.

"For me it was a different loss than the one we had against Palace because for me there was a lot more to like, especially in the first half which was maybe different to the Palace game.

"In the second half it became harder and harder for us to create."

Slot made four changes from Saturday's Selhurst Park setback, including surprisingly dropping Mohamed Salah and Alexander Isak to the bench.

"What you see is that there are a few players from us that missed pre-season so you simply cannot play them every single game," Slot said.

"You can but that could become a risk of players getting injured. We see this more and more because the demands go up more and more.

"That means it is not always that I want to rotate but sometimes I just need to because players are not ready to play three times 90 minutes in seven or eight days."

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