Liverpool is expecting to be without Trent Alexander-Arnold for this weekend’s Carabao Cup final at Wembley, but Ibrahima Konate was only withdrawn against PSG due to tiredness. The French center-back appeared to have a cramp.
Arne Slot has outlined the latest on the pair with Liverpool now only having two competitions to focus on. The Reds lost on penalties in Europe with Darwin Nunez and Curtis Jones’ misses proving costly.
“I have to ask, but for me, Ibou was more that he was tired than it was an injury. With Trent, he had to come off. That’s never a good sign,” Slot said during his post-match press conference.
“And from what I heard from people that saw the images or how he got injured, that didn’t look very good. So I would be surprised if he is available for Sunday.”
After a first-leg hammering in Paris that Liverpool somehow won by a goal to nil, the Reds could have no complaints about exiting the tournament. But that won’t lessen the blow after going so close to booking a place in the last eight.
“It was the best game of football where I was ever involved in,” Slot told Amazon Prime. “Incredible performance, especially compared to last week. First 20/25 minutes, we were all over them, created chance after chance and all of a sudden we were 1-0 down. Probably it was almost the opposite, maybe we ran out of luck because the margins were so small tonight.
“After 90 minutes it felt we deserved more than being 1-0 down. I was waiting for us to score. I don’t think the second half, apart from the last five minutes, when they threatened us once or twice. We played the perfect game except from scoring goals, it was the same for PSG last week when they played the perfect game and didn’t score and it happened to us today.”
Liverpool.com says: Losing Alexander-Arnold, not least when Conor Bradley is already absent, is a major blow. Jarell Quansah did well when he came on against PSG and will have to do the same again, in all likelihood, at the weekend. He isn’t a natural full-back and struggled there against Newcastle at St James’ Park but will have learned plenty from that game.
