Speaking to the press ahead of Saturday’s trip to Leeds United, Liverpool head coach Arne Slot challenged the idea that Florian Wirtz’s goal against Sunderland will pump up his confidence:
“If you can only have confidence if you score goals, that would be the wrong thing. I think you can see where his confidence is at if you look at the last two games – how many times he wants the ball and how many times his teammates play him the ball. That is something that tells me how much confidence he has at the moment.
“It’s also that he came back with an injury [from] Germany, so I’m already very happy that he is able to play so many minutes in these first two games after he came back from an injury. But he’s done well. Like I said, I wasn’t surprised that he was involved in the goal scored against Sunderland, because he was one of the players – not the only one – who kept constantly trying and was creative.”
Indeed, Wirtz’s choices on the ball in the lead-up to his goal certainly speak of a player filled with confidence: while the shot was certainly deflected, the bit of trickery to hold on the ball so long in such a dangerous and crowded area was a sight to behold.
Slot also addressed the necessity of getting Isak more involved in the Liverpool attack:
“No, [Isak averaging 14 touches in his last three starts is] not ideal for me, but do you know how many he had at Newcastle on average? Twenty-two. In this league, strikers don’t touch the ball that much but the few times they do touch it, it’s quite nice if they then finish it off. I have no clue what the stats of [Erling] Haaland are, but I wouldn’t be surprised – I have no clue – if he maybe doesn’t touch it 100 times a game, but he does score a lot. It’s more important for them to touch the ball in the right time than to touch it so many times. We have to make sure, because that’s a complete difference from Haaland and Alex that Haaland touches it much more in moments where it matters and there we have to improve. That’s clear and obvious – we and he as well.”
Slot refused to single Isak out, however, as the Swede adapts to life at Liverpool:
“I think he’s not the only No.9 that suffers in some games from not getting as many chances. I watched the second half from Leeds against City and I watched the whole game against Chelsea, it’s not like at this level the No.9 is involved in eight, nine, 10 chances every single half. But it’s obvious and clear to me that we, as a team, want to bring him more often in threatening situations. Before we went to only one goal conceded in two games, we had a lot of chances. The last two games, as a result because we were a little bit more compact and maybe take a little bit less risk, we haven’t been able to create that many chances as we did [in] all the games before. So, definitely one of the things on my list of things to improve is getting our No.9 more involved in the game, let alone more involved in the final third.”
