Arne Slot claiming he’s trying to”create a pathway” for young players “to play in front of 60,000 people” as justification for his team and squad selection will have offered scant consolation for the majority of those 60,000 supporters, who will have hoped to watch the senior Liverpool team fronting up and possibly winning a rare game of football rather than the kids lose one.
They will have seen through that nonsense in any case, even without their manager revealing the second, much more convincing reason for ceding this game to Crystal Palace.
Slot added: “If we keep playing the same players, like, for example, I tried with Alexander resack, with players that are missed out on preseason, that is a big risk of another injury, and we only have at this moment of time, 15 or 16 senior players available.”
Social media was awash with perplexed and frustrated Liverpool fans after the teams news was announced, with the squad named by Slot seen as an admission by many that the Dutchman couldn’t care less about their progress in the Carabao Cup, or indeed a victory to break them from their funk.
READ MORE: Arne Slot’s Crystal Palace programme notes expose his Liverpool hypocrisy
Ten changes to the starting XI and six players on the bench with squad numbers in the 90s was testament to that indifference and suggests Slot believes his Liverpool stars need a rest more than the club needs a win, which is quite something after five defeats in six and four on the spin in the Premier League.
The Carabao Cup has indeed historically been used to blood young players, by Liverpool and others. Rightly or wrongly, it’s seen as a free hit. Victory would be nice, but resting overworked first-teamers is the priority.
But the free hit and the rest should be a luxury earned by decent performances and results, and while Slot will be hoping the narrative after this game will be based around the idea that ‘it doesn’t really count’ as a defeat because of the relative experience of the two teams, their horrific run negates that typical leeway.
The kids would normally be hailed, win, lose or draw, for doing their club proud after a game like this. Instead the focus will be on why Slot decided to put them in the firing line for shots that should have been aimed at the overpaid flops who have slumped dramatically this season to put them in crisis.
This should be a game to buoy the young players, but Slot has made them a part of the misery, with their takeaway from what will have been one of few tastes – if not their first taste – of life as a Liverpool player at Anfield being that it’s a stadium full of depressed, silent fans who are understandably irritated to be watching them as Virgil van Dijk, Mohamed Salah and the rest of them watched on in their cosy coats.
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After Ismaila Sarr scored his fourth and fifth goal against Liverpool in quick succession just before half-time, the Liverpool fans could have been forgiven for wondering what the point was in staying to watch the second half, with no hope of a comeback given the list of teenagers Slot had to call upon from the bench.
And while a Carabao Cup defeat is insignificant in normal circumstances, and maybe still won’t register as more than footnote in a list of misdemeanours come judgement day for Slot, his complete disregard for a game of football in the midst of this crisis, the ill-deserved break he’s afforded to the multi-millionaire players who have put them in it and the way he’s dressed up these young players being hung out to dry as an opportunity makes this far more of a factor in the admittedly premature sack talk than it otherwise would be.
Make no mistake – this game counted. It’s six defeats in seven for the reigning Premier League champions.
