Diogo Jota will not play for Liverpool against Premier League championship rivals Arsenal on Sunday, according to Arne Slot, after the attacker sustained an injury during the team’s 2-1 victory over Chelsea the previous weekend.
Jota missed Liverpool’s Champions League triumph over RB Leipzig in the middle of the week after hobbling off the pitch in the 30th minute after colliding with Chelsea defender Tosin Adarabioyo.
The Portugal international is the latest addition to Liverpool’s expanding list of players, which also includes midfielder Harvey Elliott (foot) and goalkeeper Alisson (hamstring).
Slot also stated that full-back Conor Bradley might make a comeback to the matchday squad, although summer signing Federico Chiesa will not be travelling to North London as he continues to heal from an injury.
At a news conference on Friday, Slot stated, “I think they [Bradley, Jota, Elliott, Alisson, and Chiesa] feel good, but not for the weekend. Chiesa might train today, Diogo not, and Conor, let’s see if he can be with us tomorrow.”
Despite having a strong start to his recuperation, Slot believes Alisson may be in for a lengthy absence.
“He’s progressing well like we expect, but it’s not a short-term recovery, so it’s always difficult to judge him,” the coach from the Netherlands stated.
“I think the best way to judge an injury is at the end of an injury, the end phase of his rehab, and he’s not there yet, so I can’t tell you for how long he will be out, but don’t expect him to be against Brighton in the cup or next week.”
With just three goals given up in their first seven games of the season, Liverpool leads the Premier League in defensive performance. Slot responded, “There are two reasons why we don’t concede a lot,” when asked how he has made his squad so defensively frugal. One of them is that we dominated and controlled for a significant portion of most games, possibly except for one. Therefore, dominating, having the ball, and having a well-organised rest defence are all beneficial.
However, I also appreciate that when we play challenging games or for extended periods, as we did against Chelsea, we put in an amazing effort to avoid giving up, which is crucial. When you add in players like Virgil van Dijk and Ibu Ibrahima Konaté, as well as the two goalkeepers we have so far, these three factors are likely the reason we haven’t given up a lot of goals.
“And then to be aware of the fact that we also have Jarell Quansah and Joe Gomez, we are in a good place when it comes to centre-backs and the custodian speaks for itself, I think.”