Slot targets Liverpool recovery; weekend team news and previews: football - live

[Lewis Hall] is very close. He hasn’t trained with us yet so hopefully he will be training with us today for the first time. We will see how he looks. I think he has worked really hard. He has looked after himself and looks in really good shape. But then we have to reintroduce himself back into the squad at the right time.

I don’t think there is anything new. We are still managing Will Osula’s ankle problem. We will see how he is today, but apart from that I think we are as we were.

If you don’t win the beginning, people say: ‘oh maybe they don’t have the same team as last season’ and then they start winning and everything is positive again. Where with us, it’s exactly the opposite.

We’re both on the same points, apart from Arsenal many teams are in and around the same points. It shows how hard the Premier League is.

They’ve done very well in the last six or seven games. And maybe it’s not a surprise and you could see in the games they lost before the signs that they are a very good team.

They decided not to make a habit out of having more chances than the opponent and not win it. Let’s make sure we don’t have that habit.

Ryan [Gravenberch] trained with us yesterday. The other two [Curtis Jones and Alexander Isak] not yet.

In the end bit of an injury, things can slow down. Let’s see where the other two are.

Ryan trained with us for the first time yesterday, and will train with us today. Then we’ll make the call to see if he can start or not. The other two are probably 99.9% not in the squad on Saturday.

The thing that gives me the most confidence is the quality in the players and the chances these players are creating. This will result in the players scoring more goals than we have up until now.

We have to address other things. But if I talk about that and speak about them, people tell me I’m using excuses. So maybe it’s best that I just say that. There are other positives to go int this week – quality of the players first and foremost and the amount of chances we created from open play is enough to compete for the positions we want to compete for.

We miss nothing. I’m happy with the quality of the team. But I’m also convinced by the strategy and policy we have. What makes it ‘the issue’ – not all of them have had a proper pre-season. When three or four are injured, you go down to having 16 players.

I am a firm believer in 21 or 22 players are enough. But you have to keep them fit as we did last season. We are struggling to keep them fit this season for in my opinion, obvious reasons.

[Alexander Isak] came to us on 1 September. A few others missed out in pre-season. It has been more difficult than last season to keep them more available. When players are not available, it [workload] comes down more to the same players.

But no excuses for results. We had to play a lot of away games with only two days in between. That would have been difficult last season, and for any player that has been fit this season through pre-season. But it has not been the case this season.

Then you have to manage it. The upcoming week is three games in eight days. It has nothing to do with squad depth, but it has how we have run through the season in terms of injuries, availability every two or three days.

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