Liverpool star to miss ‘around a year’ with ACL so Arne Slot was *obviously* asked about Marc Guehi
Arne Slot has confirmed that Liverpool defender Geovanni Leoni will miss “around a year” after tearing his ACL, but refused to say he regrets missing out on Marc Guehi.
Leoni sustained the injury on his Liverpool debut against Southampton on Tuesday night.
The 18-year-old centre-back was handed his first start for the Carabao Cup clash but won’t play again until next season, Slot confirmed ahead of his side’s trip to Crystal Palace this weekend.
“The first thing is he’s not in a good place of course because he tore his ACL so he will be out for around a year,” Slot said in his pre-match press conference.
“Being so young, coming to a new country, playing so well in your first game. It’s so hard to take the positive side – there’s never a positive side – but a positive side is he’s so young. He has so many years still to go after he recovers from a terrible injury like that.”
Of course, Slot was then asked if he regrets missing out on Crystal Palace captain Guehi after a £40million deal to sign him on deadline day collapsed.
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Slot, respectful as ever, knew it wasn’t appropriate to discuss the failed transfer a day before Liverpool face Guehi’s side.
“I don’t think – one day before we play them – I want to talk about that again,” the Dutch head coach said.
“He’s a Crystal Palace player, he’s been very important for them there. We have to prepare for Crystal Palace who’s a very good team, they haven’t lost for 17 games now and he’s a big part of that team.
“A difficult team to beat, as we’ve shown. We’ve beaten them once 1-0 and twice it was a draw.
“And we have more than enough options to replace, if needed, a player in the centre-back position. We have Virgil [Van Dijk], Joe [Gomez] and Ibou [Konate] and other options.”
Guehi has been incredibly influential for Palace, and Slot’s praise of Oliver Glasner’s side’s “discipline” underlines that influence.
Asked what Palace’s biggest threat is, Slot responded: “Discipline. They have enormous discipline defensively. Ten outfield players plus a goalkeeper who work so hard to prevent the other team from scoring.
“We saw this in the Community Shield, in the moments when we were up, they were still able to be disciplined in their mid to low block. We saw this during the week when we played Southampton, who were disciplined against us, how difficult it is to play through them.
“They have individual quality and players who are a big threat. Mateta is one of them, Sarr was really good against us in the Community Shield. Two midfielders who know how to play, good centre-backs and wing-backs.”
Slot continued: “It’s very hard to score goals against them. The three times, we only scored one goal. The other time we scored two, but they scored two as well.
“It’s a difficult team to score against. They’ve improved, especially compared to the first time we played them at the beginning of last season.
“We have players who can score goals, the quality as a team to create chances for our front three or four players. Because of the way they play and line up as a 5-2-3 or 5-4-1, it’s not easy to create against. When we create, we will be smart to score as soon as we can.
“You can only score a winner if you prevent the other team from scoring as well. You do see teams that attack a lot, who get frustrated and then in transition, don’t sprint back as fast as we do. We work really hard, that is one of our strengths.”
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