Forget Mohamed Salah: Arne Slot must axe these three Liverpool players to escape sack this week
Arne Slot has to drop three more stars from Liverpool’s starting eleven to face Inter Milan in the Champions League this week.
Liverpool drew 3-3 against relegation-battlers Leeds United last time out as they surrendered the lead twice at Elland Road and slipped to ninth place.
The game’s events were quickly overshadowed by Mohamed Salah‘s shocking post-match comments, as he admitted he felt he had been “thrown under the bus” by the club after being dropped following their dismal form as a team.
Salah is not travelling to Milan as Liverpool face Inter in the Champions League on Tuesday (9 December), with the club confirming his absence on Monday (8 December) as he is taken out of the firing line for now.
The Reds are in need of a win to lift some pressure off the boss and make advances into the UCL’s top eight, and Football Insider have looked at three players who should be dropped from the team at the San Siro as a result.
Ibrahima Konate
It can be easy to feel like a broken record when discussing Konate this season, as it feels as if his woes extend all the way back to the first game of the Premier League campaign against Bournemouth.
The Frenchman has looked a shadow of his former self in recent months, amid uncertainty around his future, yet Slot has stuck by him for most games due to the lack of centre-back depth in his squad.
Konate had a shocker against Leeds last time out as he gave away a penalty with Liverpool 2-0 up which allowed the hosts back into the game.
Joe Gomez is fully fit and available to start at centre-back against Inter, and it certainly seems like a wise decision to hand him a start and give Konate a much-needed rest, as his head is clearly elsewhere right now.
Florian Wirtz
Wirtz‘s performances have improved recently, but he is still nowhere near the level of a £115million player and should not start on Tuesday evening.
The Germany playmaker is still yet to score for Liverpool since his summer move, while he has not even registered an assist in any of his last seven outings, with six of those being starts.
Inter sit second in Serie A and will pose a tough challenge for the Reds, with the game likely to be dominated by the Italian side considering both clubs’ current form.
With that and Inter’s 3-5-2 formation in mind, Slot should not line up with an attacking midfielder, and should instead start with three more robust and box-to-box players to compete properly in the middle of the park.
Milos Kerkez
Liverpool thought they had signed one of the best left-backs in the Premier League in Kerkez from Bournemouth, but his performances have been far from it so far this season.
Kerkez has angered Liverpool fans on numerous occasions, with his erratic, substandard displays almost symptomatic of their problems as a whole in the last few months.
Fellow left-back Andy Robertson shone in the Champions League against Real Madrid last month, with supporters calling on Slot to restore the Scot as his first-choice in the position from there on in.
He did not do so, and the Hungary international has continued to put in torrid performances ever since, with Robertson now surely in line for a starting berth at the San Siro due to rotation.