Arne Slot, manager of Liverpool, has confirmed that he will shoot his team for the last four games of the Premier League season.
The Reds were crowned with four games for the champions after triggering Tottenham Hotspur 5-1 in Anfield Sparke from wild celebrations on Merseyside last Sunday.
Slot was only the fifth manager who won the title of Premier League for the first time – Jose Mourinho, Carlo Ancelotti, Manuel Pellegrini and Antonio Conte, the other four – and can now take an inventory before it promises a summer of changes in the club.
Virgil van Dijk and Mohamed Salah remain after the signing of new two-year contracts, but Trent Alexander-Arnold is expected to become Real Madrid and Darwin Nunez another tips for the starting door after another season of inconsistency.
Fringe players like Harvey Elliott also limited their chances this season, especially thanks to the continuing good form of Liverpool Start 11. But now it is time that the former Feyenoord boss admitted to upgrading things a little after the pressure is switched off.
“It is the end of the season, but we also have to see this as the beginning of the next season,” noticed Slot. “There will be a certain rotation in the upcoming games. My lists will usually talk from that of us in the past ten months. We will not change all, but some players will come to the team.
“That does not mean that we will lose them. We have a lot of confidence in the players we will play now. I think some of them deserve to play earlier this season because they have trained so well and are good enough to play for this club, but I mainly selected the same players.
“This is also a moment to see where they are, look into the next season, maybe a bit, but definitely because they deserve to play.”
The reduced season of Elliott, who scored large goals in the Champions League, has been a big topic of conversation in the past few weeks, and the midfielder admitted to being angry and frustrated about looking from the sidelines.
Despite the speculation that combines him with a move to Newcastle United and Brighton & Hove Albion, the 22-year-old insisted that he would like to stay and fight for his place. This determined attitude could be music for the ears of the slot, which admitted that the strength of the accessible options led to the English U21 international hadn’t played as much as he should have had.
“It is very important that players who are here with us like to stay,” said Slot. “This is a big compliment for everyone who works here. Harvey is one of the players who didn’t have as much season as he may deserve it.
“He is in the competition with so many good players that I mainly selected other players. Also, sometimes because he was injured for a long time and I was honest with him, the first part after he had come back from his injury, he was not the same as before his injury. In the past few months he has been back to his old level.
“I didn’t have to start with different players, but I think if you look at the number of minutes that he had in the past few months and the time before they can see it, it is already increasing. That tells them more than me when he came back from his injury.”