Ekitike injury updates + why Salah was a sub

Tuesday’s trip to Turkey was a costly one for Liverpool, as they not only fell to a second successive defeat but also suffered a couple of injury scares in doing so.

Here are our Scout Notes from the 1-0 defeat to Galatasaray.

ALISSON INJURY HANDS £4.3M ‘KEEPER A CHANCE

Those aforementioned injury blows, both of them muscular, concern Alisson (£5.5m) and Hugo Ekitike (£8.7m).

Liverpool’s influential ‘keeper, who kept them in the match at Selhurst Park last Saturday, seems to be the more serious worry of the two.

Indeed, Arne Slot has all but ruled the Brazilian out of this weekend’s clash with Chelsea.

“You can be sure that he’s not playing on Saturday and let’s wait how long it is going to take. But he’s definitely not going to play on Saturday.” – Arne Slot on Alisson, to Amazon Prime

“If my player is on the floor, I nine out of 10 times fear the worst – and by the worst I mean he cannot continue. That’s what happened with Alisson.

“Normally, he will not be able to play Saturday. That’s 99.9 per cent – I’ve already said 100 per cent, but let’s make it 99.9 [although] I think it’s 100.” – Arne Slot on Alisson in his post-match presser

That hands the dirt-cheap understudy Giorgi Mamardashvili (£4.3m) a chance to impress. Slot will hopefully know by Friday’s presser just how long the Georgian will be deputising between the posts.

EKITIKE JUST CRAMP?

As for Ekitike, he too seemed to strain his hamstring in the second half.

The player himself seems to think it’s just “cramp”.

Player confidence and actual medical diagnosis are very different things, of course, as Slot reminded us after full-time.

“He felt something when he had to reach for the ball. I think we all know which one it was when we were trying to force something.

“After the game, that’s always the difficult thing with these moments when players feel like it is not too bad, but when you just walk around, it is something different than when you make a sprint or 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.” – Arne Slot on Hugo Ekitike

FRIMPONG ‘OOP’ AS SALAH BENCHED

Away from injuries, Slot continued with his policy of rotation in his frontline.

Out of the attack went Alexander Isak (£10.6m) and, more surprisingly, Mohamed Salah (£14.5m). In came Ekitike, Cody Gakpo (£7.6m) and, playing ‘out of position’ on the right wing, Jeremie Frimpong (£5.9m). Dominik Szoboszlai (£6.5m) instead started at right-back.

We’d witnessed Frimpong on the right wing in pre-season and, when Salah departs for the Africa Cup of Nations, there’s a very good chance of us seeing the Dutch defender operate there again for the Reds.

Slot explained that Salah’s accumulation of minutes was behind his first ‘proper’ benching of the campaign, ignoring last week’s EFL Cup clash with Southampton.

“Jeremie [Frimpong] played a lot of times as a wing-back or a right winger at [Bayer] Leverkusen. He played there in pre-season 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.

“Normally, normally, normally they [Galatasaray] play with the left winger inverted and the full-back really high. So, the left winger goes in the midfield and Dom [Szoboazlai] is in the midfield and Jeremie is some kind of a wing-back, but they did it the opposite today, which happens more to us that they change something.

“But I think both of them can play really well in that position and I’ve just explained also that Conor [Bradley] missed out quite a lot in pre-season. So that also means he cannot play every single game so you consider which game is best for which player. 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.” – Arne Slot

LIVERPOOL AGAIN SHORT OF THEIR BEST

Frimpong didn’t really do much to impress in an advanced role but he wasn’t alone. The sprightly Ekitike was the only real attacker to stand out, with Florian Wirtz (£8.2m) again floundering. The German looks a bit like he’s trying too hard now, with the confidence slowly ebbing away.

It’d be harsh to overly criticise Wirtz, who is still new to this Liverpool team, when so many of the more well-established figures are underperforming. Ibrahima Konate (£5.5m) has had a real up-and-down season, with Tuesday’s game one of troughs. Alexis Mac Allister (£6.4m) and Conor Bradley (£5.0m) look undercooked, too.

Another game full of errors (one culminating in Galatasaray’s match-winning penalty) and misplaced passes ensued in Istanbul.

“There can be so many reasons why an individual makes an error pass or a mistake. What you see is, and I think I explained this many times, is that there are a few players from us that missed pre-season, so you simply cannot play them every single [game]. Well, you can but then that could become a risk of players becoming injured. We have seen this more and more because the demands go up more and more, and if the demands go up, you have to prepare players for these demands. That means it is not always that I want to rotate but sometimes I need to because a player is not ready to play three times 90 minutes in seven or eight days.

“I like my squad so much but we don’t have 25 or 26 [players]. So, if we end up with two, three or four injuries, 15 or 16 players, where Rio [Ngumoha] and Trey [Nyoni] are two of these 15 or 16, need to play almost all the minutes and then things can become complicated. But this is a decision we have made together, I completely believe in this, because if you have 25, it’s very hard to manage your squad. But as a result of that, with Hugo[Ekitike], Alex [Isak], Conor [Bradley] and [Alexis] Mac Allister not having the pre-season a player should have, that also results in the fact that I cannot play them every time.” – Arne Slot on if rotation is causing the spate of individual errors

Even when Liverpool are playing below their best, which they very much are at present, they still have chances to score. Ekitike should have done better with an early one-on-one, with Gakpo wasting the follow-up. Ekitike nearly scored with a Firmino-esque flick after the break, with a rusty Isak shinning the ball when sent clear midway through the second half. Even the disappointing Wirtz had three shots.

This is definitely a slump from Liverpool that we’re witnessing right now, with the Reds still not settled after the summer shake-up (even the opening league wins weren’t convincing), but a dip where you’re still top of the Premier League table doesn’t quite equal a full-blown crisis.

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