Alisson, Alexander Isak, Mohamed Salah Liverpool injury news

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Arne Slot press conference - Alisson, Alexander Isak, Mohamed Salah Liverpool injury news

The Liverpool boss will address the media from 1.15pm ahead of his side's Premier League clash with Chelsea on Saturday lunchtime

Liverpool are in Anfield action for the penultimate time this season when they welcome Chelsea to Merseyside on Saturday lunchtime.

A match which had looked at one stage as though it could be a straight shootout for a Champions League place is instead just offering the Reds a chance to almost cement their spot at Europe's top table next season, with the Londoners having incredibly lost their last six games.

That won't mean this is a pushover for Liverpool though, and Arne Slot will be on hand to preview the game - providing updates on the fitness of Alisson, Alexander Isak and Mohamed Salah as he does so - from 1.15pm this afternoon.

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That's your Slot

Arne Slot has left the building. The Reds boss had plenty to say on injuries and on next year potentially being another transitional year for his squad.

Here's the latest on those injuries, including a potential weekend returns for Alexander Isak and Giorgi Mamardashvili.

Slot on Bradley

In the rehab it's always important if some steps go well. It's really difficult in the stage he's in now to predict when he will be back. He's still inside and working really hard but he is quite far away from going outside, that makes it quite cimplicated to tell.

Slot on another year of transition perhaps

I'm only looking forward to it so I'm not worried at all. As I looked forward to working with these players two years ago and one year ago. As a manager you're never worried, you're just looking forward to working with players. There will probably be another little transition but not as drastic as last year. One player probably replaced by Kostas Tsimikas who is coming back off loan.

Slot on team bond changing

There's a difference between bonding and mentality. When it comes to bonding it makes sense players who have had 6, 7, 8 years together have stronger than new players coming together. Mentality, we have shown many times the mentality to come back into the game such as last Sunday. When we were at 2-2 we felt we deserved to get a third goal but it didn't happen. For me mentality has nothing to do with age. When Mo as 26 and these players were in their prime they won CL and got PL with 99 points. Recently we have quite good example of players who aren't that old at PSG but have the standards to win a game with 11 players attacking and defending together. It's more about the personality of the player than the age. Of course you can inject it in the transfer market but we have a lot of players who have the right mentality to play for this club.

Slot on team not being as vulnerable to counter-attacks

In moments we have been vulnerable at counter-attacks. Not like we've conceded loads. At Manchester we conceded two. But that's not the only thing we've been vulnerable at. There are too many we have been at moments, but it would help if we scored more goals. Easier to control a game at 1-0 up than 1-0 down or 1-1. It's very clear and obvious where we have to imprve, it's something we've tried to address throughotu the season with ups and downs and will be something we will look at in the summer, first in the market then the training ground.

Slot on players lacking belief because so many things have gone wrong

It always weighs heavy on players if you lose more games than you would want, especially at a club like this. These players are used to winning. The performance clearly in the Premier League we didn't pick up the points we should have. We haven't had a very good season in the Premier League but we've played better and not got the points we should have. In the Champions League we played to our standard. Over two games, no club has been able to beat PSG in the last two years. We could have gone close at Anfield if VAR hadn't overturned an award (of a penalty) it usually doesn't.

Slot on positive end to season hopes

This season has been gone in a way that even if we have three wins and positive performances, I don't think anyone will be positive about the season. It's important we get at least one win over the line which might be enough. We are trying to do it in the best possible way, performance-wise. The positive thing is a few of hte players who can be really important for us are either coming back at the weekend or after the weekend. That will help us. Three wins won't silence the criticism. Therefore we need to have a much longer run of result and performances.

Slot on Chelsea

If our information is correct then they will have a few players back to make them stronger. That will be massive for them. Always a difficult game for both teams. Lot of very good individual players, let's hope we have a very good team performance as well. All managers have their own idea about football, they've had three this season. Current manager is closer to what Maresca usually did, so has a very clear identity how they play. Clear what to expect. Usually three centre-backs.

Slot on last three games

Usually goes hand in hand, good performance leads to results. The first and main aim is to qualify for the Champinos League and we haev shown this season we need a good performance to get results. The opposite has happened where we've had good performances and not a good result, and we've not often had a bad performance and a good result. We usually need a good performance to win a game.

Slot on injuries

Alex trained with us again yesterday for the first time. All good. He did parts of it, hopefully he can do parts or everything today and we see how much we are going to use him. Alisson not yet, Giorgi today for first time. Mo is very very close like Ali. Ibou had a personal reason for not training on Wednesday but was yesterday and today and Florian was a bit unwell but trained yesterday as well.

Arne in the house

The Liverpool boss is here, so we can begin...

Waiting for Slot

Not long until Arne is among us.

Hopefully so, anyway...

Transfers!

Do you like transfer rumours? Of course you do.

Our dedicated transfer blog is up and running ahead of the summer window, and you can follow the latest updates right here while we're waiting for Arne.

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Arne Slot will be with us from about 1.15pm to preview Liverpool vs Chelsea.

Stay tuned.

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