After the unusual case of a Champions League game that didn’t really matter it’s straight back into Premier League action against Bournemouth on Saturday.
Going deep in four competitions for Liverpool inevitably means playing two games a week, putting a massive strain on the top players in the squad and meaning few chances for real rest and time away from the pitch.
This past week, though, manager Arne Slot was able to leave the likes of Mohamed Salah, Virgil van Dijk, Dominik Szoboszlai, and Alexis Mac Allister on Merseyside for a couple of days off ahead of Saturday’s match against Bournemouth.
“You can say I rested a lot of players and you can also say you played the ones who needed playing time,” Slot said of his decision to leave most of his regular starters at home for the final Champions League league phase game.
Having locked into the top two in the table—with the draw opponents for either the same for both positions—allowed Slot to do that. And to give playing time to some other players he might need in the coming weeks.
“I was really pleased how they performed,” Slot noted. “PSV had quite a strong team and we were more than competitive. Even in the second half when there were many youngsters on the pitch. And the ones that stayed behind, they did train.
“That doesn’t give us any guarantees for Saturday, but it hopefully will help us during the upcoming three or four months because the Premier League and the Champions League is a long season with 10 months non-stop playing games.”
After Bournemouth on Saturday, it’s an unusually long gap to a mid-week fixture against Tottenham with the second leg of the League Cup semi-final set for Thursday and the Reds trailing the Spurs by 1-0 on aggregate.