All of Federico Chiesa’s Premier League appearances for Liverpool have come from the bench, with Arne Slott praising the Italian’s impact as a substitute as he scored some important goals.
Liverpool manager Arne Slott admits Federico Chiesa faces significant competition for a starting spot, with his influence off the bench highly regarded, but that could work against him.
Chasa was Slott’s only major-league signing in his first summer, but he was rarely used. This season, he mainly played on the bench, but he made a big contribution.
The former Juventus man came off the bench to score a vital goal late on in Liverpool’s opening night Premier League win over Bournemouth. He also scored a late goal against Crystal Palace and thought that was enough to secure a point before the Eagles made a late attack.
Slott insists every player has a chance to start, but given Chiesa’s quality off the bench, he could be locked in as an impact player with the forward displaying some excellent defending to deny Sunderland victory on Wednesday.
“As I just said, every player has the potential to start, but as I’ve said many times, there are plenty of options to start in his position. He’s come off the bench a few times and made an impact. Normally you bring in a striker to score, but in this situation he kept running when players might have stopped and thought they couldn’t do much one-on-one. That speaks to the mentality of not conceding goals.”
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All of Chiesa’s 10 league appearances have come from the bench, but Florian Wirths remains confident in his manager’s confidence. The German playmaker has endured a difficult start to England and thought he had scored his first goal against Sunderland, but it was ruled an own goal.
Slott insists he can’t put his confidence in Wirtz’s ability to find the net. “If you’re confident just by scoring goals, you’re wrong. You can see his confidence when you see how often he wants the ball and how often he gives him the ball,” he said.
“So he has a lot of confidence, but obviously he came back injured from Germany, so I’m glad he played so many minutes. He did well. It’s not surprising that he was involved in the goal against Sunderland, but he was one of those players who kept working hard and kept being creative.”
Liverpool fought back to pick up the points and prevent another defeat on Merseyside. Despite this, they were placed in 9th place, further behind the teams above them.
“Obviously we’re not happy with where we are at the moment (9th place), so getting back into the top four is definitely our first goal,” Slott said.
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