Arne Slot has said that Diogo Jota will miss Liverpool’s clash against Premier League title rivals Arsenal on Sunday after the forward suffered an injury during the team’s 2-1 win over Chelsea last weekend.
Jota limped off the pitch in the 30th minute following a collision with Chelsea defender Tosin Adarabioyo and missed Liverpool’s midweek victory over RB Leipzig in the Champions League as a result.
The Portugal international joins Liverpool’s growing list of absentees that includes goalkeeper Alisson (hamstring) and midfielder Harvey Elliott (foot).
Slot also confirmed that summer recruit Federico Chiesa will miss the trip to north London as he continues to recover from injury, but full-back Conor Bradley could return to the matchday squad.
“I think they [Bradley, Jota, Elliott, Alisson and Chiesa], feel good, but not for the weekend, Chiesa might train today, Diogo not, Conor, let’s see if he can be with us tomorrow,” Slot told a news conference on Friday.
Alisson could be set for an extended stint on the sidelines despite making a good start to his recovery, according to Slot.
“He’s progressing well, like we expect, but it’s not a short-term recovery, so it’s always difficult to judge him,” the Dutch coach said.
“I think the best way to judge an injury is in the end of an injury, the end phase of his rehab, and he’s not there yet, so I can’t tell you for how long he will be out, but don’t expect him to be against Brighton in the cup or next week.”
Liverpool have the best defensive record in the Premier League seven games into the season, having conceded just three goals from their opening seven matches. Asked how he has made his team so miserly in defence, Slot said: “There are two reasons why we don’t concede a lot. One of them is that we, most games — maybe except for one — we dominated and controlled for large parts of the game. So it helps if you dominate, if you have the ball and your rest defence is in order.
“But I also like that if we have difficult parts in the game, or for a large part of the game like we had against Chelsea, that the work rate is incredible not to concede and that is something that’s very important. And if you combine that with having the likes of Virgil [van Dijk and Ibu [Ibrahima Konaté] and the two goalkeepers we’ve used until now, that is probably one of the reasons why these three elements, why we haven’t conceded that much.
“And then to be aware of the fact that we also have Jarell Quansah and Joe Gomez, we are in a good place when it comes to centre-backs and the goalkeeper speaks for itself, I think.”