Slot felt Liverpool “did great business”, given all eight of their signings are aged 25 or under, and the club “should get praise” for the strategy it has adopted. <\/p>\n
“I think it is only a compliment that people tell everyone we have spent so much because that tells you the players we brought in are seen as very good players,” explained the Dutchman.<\/p>\n
“Some other teams prefer to bring in 27-year-olds because they are ready, but we think we have brought in players who are 21, 22 [and] who are ready.<\/p>\n
“I think all the money we have spent we generated ourselves by selling, and by winning the league after we didn’t buy anyone at all.”<\/p>\n
Isak did not feature in Liverpool’s 1-0 win at Burnley on Sunday – the first match since he joined the Reds – because he is still short of match fitness.<\/p>\n
The 25-year-old trained alone at former club Newcastle, in a bid to force through his switch to Anfield, and needs extra work to get up to speed after missing pre-season.<\/p>\n
Isak’s only appearance this season came for Sweden in an 18-minute cameo from the bench in a 2-0 defeat by Kosovo last week.<\/p>\n
Slot said he is “100% sure” Isak will not play 90 minutes against Atletico but indicated he will play a part against the La Liga side.<\/p>\n
“He [Isak] is part of the squad, so it’s already a Champions League game to look forward to, but if people look forward to his playing time, that could mean that could happen tomorrow as well,” Slot added.<\/p>\n
“So the moment he is fit, match fit, [he] can play 90, and then the next step is playing three times in a week 90 minutes.<\/p>\n
“And that is what he has to do; scoring goals and doing special things in attack is something he will 100% do. The main challenge he has is to become so fit that he’s first of all ready to do what he did last season.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Slot felt Liverpool “did great business”, given all eight of their signings are aged 25 or under, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429582,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8815],"tags":[748,393,4884,179,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-429581","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-liverpool","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-liverpool","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115215646368869038","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429581\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}