Arne Slot confirms Liverpool are BACK after gamble pays off

Liverpool look to have their mojo back and it's all down to one of Arne Slot's gambles paying off.

A lot of things are starting to click into place for the Reds now and while set-pieces remain a major issue for Slot to address, most of the team's frailties from the start of the season look to have gone.

One of the constant performers throughout this year's campaign has been Dominik Szoboszlai, and the decision to play him as often as possible resulted in Liverpool being without the Hungarian on Saturday afternoon. Fortunately, the improvements behind the scenes helped to mask his absence.

It's here where it's most evident that Liverpool are back. In these circumstances, anything's possible.

Liverpool's reliance on Szoboszlai is fading

The reason why the Reds' best player this season was absent for the Wolves clash is that he'd been shown too many yellow cards, and thus he was suspended after meeting the five-card threshold.

What's perhaps a little unfortunate is that is Szoboszlai had not been given a soft booking against Tottenham last week, and was able to feature on Saturday without getting a yellow, he'd had avoided the need for a suspension because the tallies are cleared after gameweek 19, per The Athletic.

Nonetheless, Slot's decision to risk a suspension for the Hungarian was a gamble, since the team was likely to struggle in his absence. Resting and rotating his midfield more often would've helped.

And yet, the collective efforts of Alexis Mac Allister, Curtis Jones and Ryan Gravenberch were so impressive that Szoboszlai being unavailable was barely noticeable. For that, Slot deserves credit.

It's all well and good saying the midfield needs to be more compact, but to delivery a largely controlled display without your star player is a lot easier said than done, even if the opposition was Wolves who are sitting bottom of the Premier League table with just two points from 18 matches.

Moving forward, it feels as though Slot can take confidence from his team's efforts and use his midfielders slightly more strategically, rather than having to play all of them at the same time.

When, and if, injuries start to set in, certain players will need to feature regularly because there isn't any depth to rest and rotate them, but for now we've got our pick of the bunch for upcoming games.

Szoboszlai will likely come straight back in against Leeds next weekend, and one of the team's great performers from the Wolves clash will have to miss out, unless Federico Chiesa is dropped instead.

It's pertinent, however, that Liverpool now aren't solely reliant on the Hungarian, just as they've managed to get to results while Mohamed Salah is away at AFCON. The team is slowly evolving.

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