Arne Slot has admitted that Federico Chiesa will not start for Liverpool against AC Milan.
The winger signed for the Reds from Juventus on the penultimate day of the summer transfer window.
But Chiesa was omitted from the match-day squad for the 3-0 victory over Manchester United and last weekend’s 1-0 loss to Nottingham Forest. That was despite the ex-Fiorentina man using the international break to build fitness.
Having been frozen out at Juve, Chiesa arrived at Anfield lacking sharpness. The Italy international will definitely be on the bench as Liverpool raise the curtain on their Champions League campaign against Milan at the San Siro on Tuesday night. But featuring from the outset is something that has already been ruled out by Slot.
The Liverpool head coach said: “I always like to bring in quality players and I think he’s a quality player with an enormous work-rate. The culture of this club is working really hard when we don’t have the ball.
“He brings this to his game in combination with scoring goals and can play in several positions.
He is, for the first time, in our team selection and it would be a big surprise if he would start tomorrow. You shouldn’t expect him to start but he will get a few minutes if we need him. That is something we will see.
For the first time with us but don’t expect him to be there from the starting line-up as he was training at Juve alone for a long time and with us for a few weeks. It’s too early for him to play 90 but hopefully can play his first minutes in the upcoming fixtures.”
Slot came under some criticism for not rotating his starting line-up against Forest after the international break. But he insisted that wasn’t the reason for the surprise loss. He added: “For me, and everyone can have an opinion, it’s too simple to put the loss on rotations.
“Too many people didn’t reach their normal level – not just the players who started but the ones who came in. For me, it had a lot to do with the playing style of the opponent but in the end, if you don’t win you try to look at as many arguments as you can find.
I ask myself the question does it have the things to do what you said, but I think we could have done a lot of things much better that were not to do with rotation.
“You never know if you’d have rotated three or four players if we’d have won that.”
