Arne Slott has revealed that he ignored the fitness team’s recommendations for Liverpool star Florian Wirtz in the 2-0 win over West Ham. The German midfielder suffered an injury during the international break and had missed the last two matches.
However, he returned to the starting XI at the London Stadium as goals from Alexander Isak and Cody Gakpo secured the Premier League champions a vital three points. Wirtz produced arguably his best performance in England’s top flight since his £116m summer transfer from Bayer Leverkusen, playing in an attacking midfield position with support from Dominik Szoboszlai, Ryan Gravenbirch and Alexis Mac Allister in the middle of the pitch.
Although Slott was reluctant to praise Wirtz too much, he admitted that he ignored suggestions from the performance staff that he needed to be substituted before finally being replaced by Curtis Jones in the 75th minute, and expressed satisfaction with Wirtz’s performance.
The Liverpool manager said, “The team played a very good game.” “Recently I’ve been asked a lot about individuals and whether they played outside of their usual standards, but each time I’ve pointed the finger at the team.
“I can see and acknowledge Florian’s very positive performance, but I would also like to emphasize that the team’s performance was much better.
“We tried to add an extra midfielder and he was very important for us to find that extra midfielder every time.
“He was good off the dribble, he was a good one-touch pass, he got one ball to Cody and then he didn’t get a shot, but we had a lot of those moments and he was involved in a lot of them.”
“The performance staff kept telling me, ‘He should be out,’ because he was out for a week and a half and only practiced once, so to a certain extent it might have been a little bit of a risk to keep him on the team, but situations call for exceptions and today was one of them.”
The Reds broke the deadlock with Isak calmly scoring his first league goal for the club since his £125m move from Newcastle on transfer deadline day.
Slott added: “It’s a bit unfair to him as well (that the goal was a relief). As a No. 9, generally speaking, he’s playing more minutes now than I’ve played with Alex, for obvious reasons.”
“Even today we had to take him off in the 68th minute. He has played a lot of games, but not that many in terms of minutes.
“It was very important for us to win 1-0 as a team and it was also important for him because it was his third chance in the game and I think he had less than 10 minutes left.”
“It’s important for us and for him to score just before being sent off.”
