Arne Slot confirms Liverpool injury blow as Reds boss forced to change his plans

Liverpool saw disconnected Lille connected Tuesday nighttime but Curtis Jones' wounded forced him disconnected astatine half-time and meant that Arne Slot has to alteration his archetypal plans for the team

Curtis Jones was forced disconnected done wounded during Liverpool's triumph implicit Lille with Arne Slot having to rejig his plans for the Reds.

The games proceed to travel heavy and accelerated for the Premier League leaders but they maintained their spot astatine the apical of the Champions League standings with a triumph implicit the French side. Jones started successful midfield alongside Ryan Gravenberch and Dominik Szoboszlai.

But the academy postgraduate saw his nighttime chopped abbreviated by injury, aft assisting Mohamed Salah's opening goal, and had to beryllium hauled disconnected astatine half-time. The program had been to instrumentality disconnected Gravenberch and Szoboszlai, but Jones' forced withdrawal changed the dynamics and forced Slot into a rethink.

He said: “Yeah, the thought was to instrumentality Dom disconnected and Ryan disconnected astatine fractional time, but Curtis unluckily couldn’t proceed truthful that’s wherefore Dom stayed a spot longer. There was a infinitesimal successful the game. What helium felt, helium said, ‘Let’s play for 5 much minutes and past let’s spot however it is.’ But helium said helium had to travel retired astatine half-time.

“We wanted to triumph this crippled but we were besides alert of the information that we had to negociate the loads. We would person been really, really, truly unlucky if we would person mislaid doubly and inactive not been successful the apical eight. As we cognize now, I deliberation 18 points would person been capable to play apical eight. But with 21 determination is nary discussion.”

Harvey Elliott was past introduced astatine the interruption and it was the midfielder who came up with the winning extremity astatine Anfield. Despite being down to 10 men Lille equalised done Jonathan David, but that parity didn't past agelong with Elliott scoring conscionable 5 minutes later.

That onslaught ensured the Reds stay the lone squad successful the Champions League to person a 100 percent record. They've won each 7 games and, arsenic things stand, arsenic poised to get a favourable gully travel the knockouts.

Slot has had to woody with respective absentees, including Joe Gomez, who is missing from the backline. Conor Bradley has spent clip retired but returned to the starting XI, replacing Trent Alexander-Arnold astatine right-back, and helium came disconnected precocious on, but it was simply precautionary.

He said: “Conor, the thought was to play 90, but successful the extremity you could spot it got much pugnacious and pugnacious and pugnacious for him successful presumption of loads. So you don’t privation to instrumentality the hazard of him getting injured successful the past fewer minutes similar what happened against Real Madrid.”

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