FRANKFURT, Germany — Arne Slot said he hopes Alexander Isak “isn’t out for a few weeks” after the Liverpool head coach admitted concerns over the £125 million ($167 million) forward’s fitness following a groin injury during Wednesday’s 5-1 Champions League win against Eintracht Frankfurt.
Liverpool emphatically ended their four-game losing streak against the Bundesliga side in Germany, but a hamstring injury sustained by Jeremie Frimpong and Isak’s groin setback took the gloss off the win for the Premier League champions.
Isak’s struggle for form and fitness continued, however, with the former Newcastle striker having an unproductive 45 minutes before being replaced at the interval by Federico Chiesa.
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And after barely training during the summer due to his standoff with Newcastle over his transfer to Liverpool, Slot said that Isak’s fitness is becoming a worry.
“Alex had to go off at half-time and that’s not something you ask for,” Slot said. “He felt his groin, so let’s hope it’s not too bad.
“I’m hoping that this doesn’t have to be that bad because if he would be out now for a few weeks, that would throw him back or put him back. I don’t know how to say it.
“But it’s the difficult balance we were having with him. When he came, he hardly had trained.
“You try to prepare players for once a week football, but if you are Liverpool and you play every three days, or normally three times in eight days, then you try to prepare them for that programme which is not always so easy if you don’t have preseason. So that’s what we tried to do.
“He missed out on preseason and didn’t train for a long time with the team.”
Slot said that Isak was fit to play against Frankfurt — “I wouldn’t have played him he if wasn’t” — but he admitted that Liverpool are finding it difficult to get the 26-year-old fully fit after his disrupted summer.
“He came in the first of September,” Slot said. “We had to bring him to us once a week and now we’ve tried to bring him to twice a week, which he did for the national team [Sweden].
“He was perfectly fit when he came back from the national team and he was perfectly fit before the [Manchester] United game, so we were expecting him to be ready to play again today, which he did, but he felt his groin a little bit.
“I think we did exactly what was needed. We were really careful with him. The Swedish national team as well.
“They played him twice last time, which he could do, so I’m not criticising at all the Swedish national team, because we actually told them that he’s ready to play twice.
“So it’s a thin balance if you missed out on preseason. Some march through it and some unfortunately get injured again.”
