Arne Slot confessed how challenging it was not to start Harvey Elliott in Liverpool’s 3-1 victory over Southampton, especially after the young midfielder clinched a dramatic late winner against Paris Saint-Germain just days earlier.
Despite Elliott’s 87th-minute heroics at Parc des Princes which secured the win on Wednesday night, he didn’t make it into the first team for Saturday’s Premier League fixture, as Slot made only three alterations from the squad that overcame the French giants.
Elliott, aged 21, however, was instrumental following his introduction along with two others during half-time, as Liverpool were trailing after Will Smallbone’s opening goal for the struggling Saints. Within minutes of coming onto the pitch, Elliott’s spark aided Liverpool in flipping the contest with goals from Darwin Nunez and Mohamed Salah.
Salah’s subsequent late penalty cemented a 3-1 triumph, extending Liverpool’s lead at the summit of the Premier League to a hefty 16 points.
When questioned by the ECHO about the difficulty of benching Elliott after his European spectacle, Slot admitted: “It is always a difficult decision not to start Harvey, not to start Wata (Wataru Endo), not to start all the other ones I don’t play.
“But if someone comes in for five minutes, touches his first ball and scores a goal and then you change your whole idea about all the line-ups you made before, that would be a bit out of line – a bit weird as well.
“He got 45 minutes today because he did so well in Paris. But there’s also a reason why I played so many times the other ones and all the time they deserved that trust. But today, if I could do it one more time over, I would have started it differently than I started today…but you don’t know this in advance.”
(Image: Getty)
Despite this, Slot remains confident that Elliott will have ample chances to cement his place in the team if he maintains his current form. “Yeah there is enough time, we play nine more games in the Premier League and hopefully a few more in the Champions League as well and one more in the League Cup,” Slot said.
“What it is with him is also with other players; they are in competition with so many good players and that makes it sometimes difficult to make a line-up.”
“But it always helps to bring in performances like this, for him but also for Wata. He came in 15 minutes before the end again and showed how important he is for this team and the others as well.”
