Arne Slot, the Liverpool manager, praised Manchester City coach Pep Guardiola on Thursday for his management of an injury-hit squad and raised concerns about his own players’ readiness ahead of their Premier League showdown on Sunday at the Etihad Stadium.<\/p>\n
Right-back Conor Bradley is likely to miss the clash against Manchester City as well as the Newcastle United game on Wednesday due to a muscle injury. Meanwhile, defender Joe Gomez is out for the rest of the season after undergoing surgery on his hamstring.<\/p>\n
There are also doubts over the availability of forward Cody Gakpo, who missed Liverpool\u2019s last two league matches due to injury.<\/p>\n
“I hope he plays, but I\u2019m not 100% sure,” Slot told reporters on Thursday. “Cody has not trained with the team yet. It will be a very tough match.”<\/p>\n
He added: “Joe Gomez had surgery, so he will be out for a long time. Maybe he returns before the end of the season, but I\u2019d be surprised if Conor is available. You can assume that won\u2019t happen.”<\/p>\n
“The reason why Diogo Jota and Trent Alexander-Arnold haven\u2019t played 90 minutes five times in 15 days is because they are just returning from injury,” he explained.<\/p>\n
Manchester City, currently fourth in the league, was eliminated from the Champions League after a 6-3 aggregate loss to Real Madrid. Star striker Erling Haaland missed their 3-1 defeat away from home on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Speaking about Manchester City, which is in a fierce battle to secure a top-four spot, Slot said: “The style remains the same even if the team wears a different shirt. It\u2019s Guardiola\u2019s approach, even when they drop points. But he needs top-level players.”<\/p>\n
He continued: “If you miss that many players in this league, it becomes extremely difficult.”<\/p>\n
“City signed three or four players, and I can already see them bouncing back, considering their 4-0 win against Newcastle,” he noted.<\/p>\n
He concluded: “You have to fight hard and put in a big effort to keep City away from your goal because they are extremely strong in possession. But they will also be up against a strong team that has gone 22 league games unbeaten.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arne Slot, the Liverpool manager, praised Manchester City coach Pep Guardiola on Thursday for his management of an injury-hit squad and raised concerns about his own players’ readiness ahead of their Premier League showdown on Sunday at the Etihad Stadium. Right-back Conor Bradley is likely to miss the clash against Manchester City as well as …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43367,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43363"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43368,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43363\/revisions\/43368"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}