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Generally, whenever he has had the chance to, Arne Slot has kept his Liverpool changes to a minimum this season. Where Jurgen Klopp would rotate more substantially, his successor has often gone with nearly the same team game by game.
A couple of times, there have been wholesale changes — in the earlier rounds of the Carabao Cup — but key men like Virgil van Dijk, Ryan Gravenberch, and Mohamed Salah have started every Premier League and Champions League fixture. Van Dijk has played every single minute in those competitions while Gravenberch and Salah have been given around an hour off each.
Clearly, there are benefits to that. As a general rule, playing your best team every week should give you the best chance of winning. And so far, Slot has been able to avoid injuries in the main — something he will be hoping is sustained.
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As a result of being so strong, Liverpool is top of the Premier League and the overwhelming favorite to win another title, and right up there among the top contenders for the Champions League too. No one will want to face the Reds in the knockout phase.
But there are also a couple of questions that have emerged as a result of the limited rotation. Firstly, can the levels of fitness last? Gravenberch, in particular, has never played anything like this level of action at this level and intensity so he is heading into something of the unknown.
Secondly, though, when players who are on the fringes come back, are they going to be ready? Against Spurs in the Carabao Cup, Slot made an uncharacteristic four changes — three coming across his backline — and each looked rusty.
Jarell Quansah, who lasted half an hour before coming off with illness, started very nervously. Conor Bradley, alongside him to Van Dijk’s right, was not much better on the ball, with possession often being lost too cheaply.
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On the opposite side of the defense, Kostas Tsimikas almost played Dominic Solanke in with one of his first touches. He improved as the game went on, but the Greek was lacking sharpness.
Most rusty of all was arguably Diogo Jota, who didn’t quite seem to know where he should be for much of the game. When the ball came to him, it often bounced off him or his attempted pass went astray.
Slot said Bradley came in for Trent Alexander-Arnold in part because he needed minutes to get back up to speed again. But that is true of Tsimikas, Quansah, Jota and Harvey Elliott too.
Each is likely to play a part for Liverpool over the next few months, and therefore the conundrum of how to keep — or rather get — them sharp needs to be resolved quickly. Jota, for instance, was starting his first match since mid-October, and Bradley his first since Real Madrid. It should be little wonder, then, that they struggled to match the intensity and get into rhythm.
The only fix is to find more ways of giving them meaningful minutes. A fully firing Jota is Liverpool’s best number nine and an in-tune Elliott would genuinely be like a new signing. For that reason, it is a key challenge that Slot needs to solve.