Alexander Isak is poised to be thrown into League Cup action with Arne Slot determined to get his £125million man up to full speed.
Liverpool’s head coach will, like so many of his counterparts, take the chance to rotate his team this evening and there will be a first competitive start for Giorgio Mamadarshvili, the £33million goalkeeper who has been bought to one day succeed Alisson Becker.
Key men such as Alisson, Virgil van Dijk, Mo Salah and Ryan Gravenberch will all be given the chance to rest after a busy start to the campaign, with exciting youngsters Rio Ngumoha and Trey Nyoni pushing hard to start.
It is the prospect of Isak leading the line against Southampton, however, that will add most intrigue to the third round tie as Slot looks to hurry along the Sweden international’s acclimatisation into Liverpool’s squad after a disrupted summer.
Isak showed flashes on excellence when he made his debut against Atletico Madrid seven days ago but he was consigned to a substitute’s role for the Merseyside derby, as the physical impact of starting a match for the first time since May lingered.
Given that Isak spent the summer at loggerheads with Newcastle, he needs every chance to get match fitness – he has only played 99 competitive minutes so far in this campaign – and Slot sees this as a perfect chance to get Isak up and running.
Alexander Isak is poised to be thrown into League Cup action against Southampton this week
With key men such as Alisson, Virgil van Dijk and Mo Salah all to be given the chance to rest after a busy start to the season, exciting youngster Rio Ngumoha is pushing hard to start
‘There are the players that need a game and we’re happy that we have one,’ said Slot. ‘If we wouldn’t have had one, we probably would have arranged a friendly in this week for these players because they need to play games as well to keep them ready whenever we need them.
‘We’ve used quite a lot in the last three games because we thought we needed to keep this energy throughout all the three games – but not all of them. And the few we haven’t used, it’s definitely the perfect moment for them to get playing time.’
Liverpool have been to the League Cup final twice in the last two seasons – Isak scored the goal which meant they lost to Newcastle at Wembley in March – and while it is not top of Slot’s priorities, the importance of maintaining momentum against Southampton cannot be lost.
‘There’s no trophy we underestimate, we always want to win every trophy we compete for,’ said Slot. ‘But that’s the good thing about the quality of the squad we have, that we still have a very good team that we can play (against Southampton) But we have to think about the long-term as well.
‘If we want to compete in every single trophy then some players need a normal week, which is not playing during the week once in a while as well. That’s managing a team throughout the whole season with trying to compete at every level we are competing for.’
