Arne Slot On Rotation and Leaving Stars On Merseyside for PSV Match

Photo by ANP via Getty Images

The Liverpool manager has left most of his regular starters at home for the final Champions League league phase game.

Liverpool head into the final week of the new look Champions League league phase top of the table and knowing that no matter the results on the day they will end up in the top two when everything’s said and done. And functionally, first or second makes no difference.

The top two sides in the competition will both pass through to the Round of 16, where they’ll be paired against the winners between the 15th and 16th sides versus the 17th and 18th from the playoff round. The Reds’ future is set, then. Though if you’re going to play, it’s still always better to win.

“It doesn’t matter at all if we end up one or two,” manager Arne Slot reflected ahead of the match. “So this is a game for us has no importance to the league table. But a very wise man once said to me, ‘I have never seen anything good coming from losing a football game.’

“So we are not going into the game trying to lose the game—we will do everything we can to try to win it. But the second thing is we have 13 or 14 players that have the most playing time and for the ones that haven’t played a lot it’s useful for them to have 90 minutes for if we do get injury problems.”

In other words, Liverpool want to win and will go out with a game plan to try to do so. But there will be significant rotation and plenty of players—perhaps even all of them—not amongst those 13 or 14 who have eaten up most of the minutes so far in 2024-25.

In fact, the only players who started against Ipswich on the weekend who even travelled to the Netherlands to face PSV are Cody Gakpo and Andy Robertson, with players like Virgil van Dijk, Mohamed Salah, Ibrahima Konaté, Dominik Szoboszlai, and Alexis Mac Allister staying on Merseyside.

“These other players have to get a bit of game rhythm then as well,” Slot added of his approach to tonight’s match. “So, it’s a choice for the long-term. The result maybe doesn’t tell you anything in the short-term but definitely it will help us for the long-term.”

Source: liverpooloffside.sbnation.com