Liverpool is 15 points clear at the top of the Premier League table. Having hammered Spurs last weekend to secure the league title, it cannot be overtaken.
And while Arne Slot will want to finish strongly and end his first season in charge on a high, ahead of a big summer, he should also be taking the opportunity to rotate a little from here. It doesn’t need to be wholesale, but the benefits would be twofold.
Firstly, the likes of Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk deserve a rest. Ryan Gravenberch, too, has started every Premier League game so far this season, playing more minutes than ever before. Liverpool might as well take the rare chance to save their legs while it can.
Salah, chasing more records, might have something to say about that, but Liverpool has to be sensible. The Egyptian and Van Dijk, in particular, are at an age where overplaying them is pointless.
More significant than that, though, is the chance to give a game to a couple of players who haven’t featured as much as they would have been expecting. Federico Chiesa, for instance, who will get a league winners’ medal even if he doesn’t play again, has not been seen since he scored in the Carabao Cup final.
Now the games are essentially meaningless, would it not make sense to use him a bit more in order to gauge where he might be up to ahead of the summer? Signed for a bargain sum of around $13 million (£10 million) a year ago, he has been played sporadically at best since. A decision on his long-term future could therefore soon await, and you can only learn so much in training.
(Image: Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
Harvey Elliott, too, is another player who has seen his minutes extremely limited. The Liverpool number 19 doesn’t want his future to be elsewhere, but he might not have a choice if he isn’t going to get chances to play.
Borussia Dortmund and Bayer Leverkusen are among the sides keeping an eye on his situation, and no wonder, given his level of talent. In the next few games, though, Slot might as well use him against good sides in Chelsea, Arsenal, Brighton and Crystal Palace, to give him the opportunity to impress.
“I hope that I can push on [next season],” Elliott told the Liverpool ECHO this week. “This is my team, I am committed to them, and it’s just a situation that is always going to have a lot of talk, I just need to think about what is best for my future, my career, and as much as I want it to be here.
(Image: Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
“You never know what is going to happen around the corner. If I had it my way, that would be here, I would play each and every game here and stay here for the rest of my career.
“But it all depends on managers and the people above. As I said, you don’t know what could happen, but as far as I am aware, I am here, here to stay and this is the club I want to be at.”
That only stands to be true if he can see a way to make the most of his career by staying at Anfield, though. And with nothing riding on the next few games, they could represent a good chance to convince him as much as the other way around.
Learn more
Finally, and in a slightly different case to Chiesa and Elliott, if Trent Alexander-Arnold still hasn’t committed his future to Liverpool, then Conor Bradley should be trialed in the right-back role as often as possible. In part, that is fitness permitting — he was injured for the Spurs game and wasn’t in training with his teammates on Wednesday.
Once he returns, however, Slot needs to determine whether he is at the level to compete with the very best teams — like Arsenal — and whether his body is up to the demands without getting more injury setbacks. There is only one way to test that.
So far, Slot has been wedded to the same group of players this season, and it is impossible to argue with that given the success that his side has had in the league. Now, though, he has the ideal chance to rotate things a little more often in the name of experimenting. It’s an opportunity he shouldn’t turn down.
