Arne Slot has admitted that Harvey Elliott from his starting line-up for Liverpool's 3-1 victory over Southampton could have been the wrong decision.
As a reward for scoring a last-minute winner in the 1-0 Champions League victory in Paris Saint-Germain, Elliott was on the couch against the saints. After a bad first half where the MerseSiders donated, a goal in the break will be a goal, Slot Curtis Jones and Elliott introduced.
The 21-year-old was one of the other two players who brought the Dutchman, with the Premier League leaders behind him. The replacement was bearing fruit, while Liverpool turned the game with a goal from Darwin Nunez and a bracket of penalties from Mohamed Salah.
The result has broadened the gap between Liverpool and Arsenal to 16 points. After the game, Slot admitted that Snubbing Elliott was in retrospect perhaps an assessment error.
When asked by the Liverpool Echo whether it was difficult to leave Elliott from the starting line-up, Slot said: “It is always a difficult decision not to start Harvey, not to start Wata (Wataru Endo), not to start all the others I don't play.
“But if someone comes in for five minutes, touches his first ball and scores a goal and then you change your whole idea over all the line -ups that you made before, that would be a bit out of the line – a bit weird too.
“He got 45 minutes today because he did so well in Paris. But there is also a reason why I played the other so often and they deserved that trust all the time.
“But today, if I could do it again, I would have started it differently than I started today … but you don't know this in advance.”
“What it is with him is also with other players; they are in competition with so many good players and that sometimes makes it difficult to make a line-up. But it always helps to bring in versions for him, but also for Wata. He came again in 15 minutes before the end and showed how important he is for this team and the others.”
With reflection, Slot may have desired that he has deployed Elliott about Dominik Szoboszlai. The Hungarian, who played the full 90 minutes against PSG, was completed during the break instead of Alexis Mac Allister.
Slot admitted that the collision against the saints might have been 45 minutes too much for the ex-RB Leipzig midfielder and that he had made a mistake. Slot added: “Every time I sit here and talk about Dominik, I am talking about he is a machine. He can continue, run and run and run.
“It was perhaps the first time that I saw a different energy than him this season, which might be normal. Maybe I made a mistake by playing him because he gives so much every game. The good news is that he only played 45 and is now more equipped for the coming week than he is playing him for 90.”
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