Arne Slot has denied that Liverpool have been lucky with injuries this season as he said their excellent fitness record was the product of the fitness of their players and the excellence of their medical team.
Whereas title rivals Arsenal have been without key players for large swathes of the season, with Bukayo Saka and both strikers, Kai Havertz and Gabriel Jesus, out now and captain Martin Odegaard missing in the autumn, Slot’s squad have often had a relatively clean bill of health.
But the Dutchman brought performance coach Ruben Peeters with him from Feyenoord as part of his bid to prevent injuries and said Liverpool are using their expertise in their attempts to keep players available.
And he offered a reminder that they have nevertheless lost the services of key men at points. Cody Gakpo, who sat out the win over Paris Saint-Germain on Wednesday, is a doubt for Saturday’s game against Southampton, goalkeeper Alisson was absent for two months in autumn and striker Diogo Jota was another long-term absentee.
He said: “If you think injuries are only a part of luck or bad luck then we’ve been lucky but we try to believe in the fact that we try to prevent them from a certain way of working. That we don’t have many injuries, I don’t see that as luck. I see it as, first of all, top professionals – our players do everything to try to stay fit – and, second of all, great facilities and a great staff.
“You need to show this over a longer period of time to consider it luck or bad luck. If we can continue doing this for years without many big injuries then it’s probably also quality, although you cannot go through a season in the Premier League, Champions League and all these cup competitions we play in this country without any injuries.
“Diogo Jota was out for three or four months without a start, Alisson Becker has been out for weeks, maybe even months, Trent [Alexander-Arnold] has been out, Conor Bradley. Joe Gomez is out now for three months. We also have our injuries but you cannot go through a season without an injury. It’s more the amount of injuries you try to hopefully prevent. It could be luck but I hope we do things in the right way.”
But Slot was happy to concede Liverpool were very fortunate against Paris Saint-Germain when Luis Enrique’s team had 27 shots to their two and, aided by the brilliance of Alisson, the Premier League leaders won 1-0. But the head coach nevertheless felt his players’ work-rate was crucial in their victory.
He added: “We weren’t a little bit lucky [against PSG], we were really lucky but as Michael Jordan said once, ‘The harder you work, the more luck you have’. This is the biggest compliment you have to give the players, they worked incredibly hard and even the second half we didn’t control ball possession, we didn’t weren’t the dominant team at all but we controlled them better than in the first half.
“That also has to do with the players being able – if you were 45 minutes with the other team having the ball a lot and having to defend so much – mentally and physically so strong to come up with the second half performance with not giving away as many open chances as we did in the first half. And, even scoring a goal on the counter-attack shows you how mentally and physically strong these players are.
“If you want to win something – if it’s the Premier League, League Cup, Champions League or FA Cup – you need to have once in a while a game where you don’t play your best football and you are lucky – which is maybe not luck if you work as hard as we do – to get away with a result. There are almost no teams that play 38 games or in the Champions League it’s not as many games that play only good football. Real Madrid are the best example of that, they also find a way to win a game if the other team are better than them.”
