Liverpool boss Arne Slot believes players get no time off because of the extensive fixture list ahead of their Premier League clash with Brentford
Melwood, Liverpool, UK
Melwood, Liverpool, UK
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00:00You've got a really busy period coming up now,
00:03where for the foreseeable future you're going to be playing week, weekend, week, weekend.
00:08Do you vary things in training, do you do anything differently in order to make sure...
00:14No, because if I remember correctly, this has been the situation from the moment we started
00:22against Brentford, maybe that was the only week afterwards where we didn't play a game
00:26during the week, but from that moment on, it was almost every time since the Champions League started,
00:31it's almost every week a double programme, and then you would tell me,
00:35yeah, but there were international breaks where they went to the national team,
00:39which is true, because they were ten days off for me or seven days off for me,
00:42but not for the players. So even in March, again, where you feel like,
00:46OK, there's a break in March, but I know a bit better than every other country
00:53what the Dutch team plays against, and that's Spain.
00:55So it's going to be for Virgil, for Cody and for Ryan,
00:58two very tough games against a very strong team again,
01:02when you guys think they have a break.
01:05For the whole season it's like this, this is what makes the Premier League
01:08the hardest league in the world to play in, I think, and to compete in.
01:14But we've tried to prepare them in pre-season and during the year for this schedule,
01:20so if you look at it a bit closer, you see that every three or four weeks
01:26there's been a break for a player like Virgil when we had the League Cup game,
01:30or another game where he was off during the week.
01:34That's the way we try to manage it, and the good thing is what we still see
01:38is that the physical output, even after the winter break, is even higher than before,
01:44so they are completely fit and ready for this programme.
01:48But if you look at the results, you could argue differently,
01:51but I've said many times before that it's nine or ten times
01:54because of the resistance you face from the other team,
01:56and not about if it's a 12-15 kick-off or injuries or other excuses that are mostly there.
02:04It's always about the quality of the team you face, in my opinion.