{"id":155352,"date":"2025-10-31T13:36:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T13:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/155352\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T13:36:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T13:36:10","slug":"slot-shuts-down-gomez-right-back-calls-keeps-door-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/155352\/","title":{"rendered":"Slot Shuts Down Gomez Right-Back Calls; Keeps Door Open"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arne Slot<\/a> will not sacrifice his ideals by naming a more defensive full-back \u2013 namely Joe Gomez<\/a> \u2013 in pursuit of stability, but is \u201cmore than open to adapt\u201d to win games.<\/b><\/p>\n

Liverpool are now 10 games without a clean sheet and have conceded first in each of their last seven, leading to concerns over their defensive setup.<\/p>\n

With regular changes at right-back as Conor Bradley<\/a>, Jeremie Frimpong<\/a> and midfielder Dominik Szoboszlai<\/a> all fill the role \u2013 along with Calvin Ramsay<\/a> in midweek \u2013 there have been calls for a more defensive option.<\/p>\n

In his pre-match press conference before the visit of Aston Villa<\/a>, Slot was asked whether he had considered tweaking his back line with Gomez an option at right-back.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does go against my beliefs, but I have won games in the past [by doing that],\u201d he admitted.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m talking about Man City<\/a> away [when we won 2-0 last season], which went maybe against my beliefs, but it was necessary to play it over there like that in the second half.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I would be more than open to adapt in certain situations.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I don\u2019t think the story is, at least in my opinion, that we concede chance after chance after chance and that we are too open. It\u2019s absolutely not like this.<\/p>\n

\u201cApart from Palace, because in the first half we could have been two or three-nil down, and maybe the Brentford<\/a> game, I think all the other games we deserved much more than we got.<\/p>\n

\"LIVERPOOL,<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we hardly conceded a chance \u2013 even this week, with the team I put out which played for the first time together, I think they only conceded three big chances.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately all three went in. But that\u2019s because they were \u2018big\u2019; they weren\u2019t \u2018chances\u2019, they were \u2018big chances\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t see us conceding a lot of chances, so I don\u2019t see a reason to change our playing style completely.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we need to do better in not conceding goals, that\u2019s for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slot views Gomez as a centre-back<\/p>\n

\"LIVERPOOL,<\/p>\n

Gomez made his second start of the campaign as one of 10 changes for the 3-0 defeat to Crystal Palace<\/a> in the Carabao Cup<\/a>, doing so again as a centre-back.<\/p>\n

He has barely been used as a right-back even from the bench under Slot, who has relied upon him as backup to Virgil van Dijk<\/a> and Ibrahima Konate<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With Bradley still available and Ramsay another option it is unlikely that the head coach will turn to his No. 2 in a role he has played regularly throughout his decade at Liverpool.<\/p>\n

That could also be informed by his lack of options at centre-back, as if any of Van Dijk, Konate or Gomez pick up an injury, Slot would be desperately short in a key area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arne Slot will not sacrifice his ideals by naming a more defensive full-back \u2013 namely Joe Gomez \u2013…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2221,9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,26763,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-155352","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-arne-slot","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-joe-gomez","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115469050991969491","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}