Liverpool’s understudies have been a title challenge trump card but Diogo Jota’s return adds new dimension

Arne Slot has real injury issues in defence - but his attack has just been granted a big boost in numbers

There is a club in the north-west, recent champions of both England and Europe, who have famously been riven by injuries this season. It isn’t Liverpool. Not because their squad has remained fully fit but because, as Arne Slot has noted more than once, “nobody spoke about it”.

And if that isn’t strictly true, Liverpool’s injury problems have been camouflaged by results. It is harder to argue they are a problem when they are unbeaten in 19 games and boast the Champions League’s only 100 percent record. Or, indeed, when understudies have delivered the displays Caoimhin Kelleher and Conor Bradley did against Real Madrid.

But Liverpool have been short. They only had six outfield substitutes for Tuesday’s Champions League win at Girona, one of whom, James Norris, has played a mere nine minutes of first-team football for the club. Slot has only had five defenders for his four spots at the back and four attackers for places in his front three of late. His back-up midfielders for Saturday’s 2-2 draw with Fulham, Wataru Endo and Harvey Elliott, excelled for Jurgen Klopp last season but are yet to start a league or European game for the new head coach.

Yet on a day when his options narrowed further for Wednesday’s Carabao Cup tie at Southampton, Andy Robertson’s red card bringing a ban, meaning Ryan Gravenberch spent much of the Fulham game as a makeshift centre-back and leaving Virgil van Dijk musing that “maybe the manager has to be creative” in midweek, they expanded in another respect.

Four has become six in attack. Diogo Jota and Federico Chiesa returned to the bench; the Portuguese to the pitch, too, scoring seven minutes into his return. The trip to Southampton was always likelier to bring Chiesa’s comeback.

Anfield rocked to the sound of Jota’s song. They have seen so little of Chiesa he scarcely has the same cult status. The common denominator is that each has been out for longer than expected; sadly, that is a habit of Jota’s.

“Hopefully he can stay fit and be important for us like he has been in the past,” said the captain Van Dijk. Yet Jota’s defining characteristic can be his sharpness and his attributes were apparent in his equaliser: the movement that means he can materialise in space, the coolness of finish. “I think he was very good when he came on in that false nine/No 10-ish [role], very lively and that's what he brings to the team,” said Van Dijk.

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If Jota is a unique player, the early season impression was that he is Slot’s first-choice centre forward. In his absence, the Dutchman showed a penchant for original thinking to reinvent Luis Diaz as a No 9. It worked wonderfully when the Colombian scored a hat-trick against Bayer Leverkusen, but he has gone seven games without a goal since then. Darwin Nunez assisted Jota’s strike against Fulham, but his tally this season stands at three in 20; go back further and it is three in 30.

The numbers would not suggest Liverpool really missed Jota’s goals: not when Mohamed Salah has nine goals in his last eight league games, Cody Gakpo seven in his last 10 outings in all competitions. And yet a squad that has shown a strength at times has looked stretched, even as Liverpool have flourished.

Of the 22 main players in Slot’s squad – with apologies to Vitezslav Jaros, Tyler Morton and Trey Nyoni, who have also taken the field this season – the second most minutes have been played by one right winger, the second fewest by another. The two are linked: Salah has played 1,883 minutes, Chiesa just 78. It is an uneven job-share. Salah has been directly involved in 29 goals, Chiesa one. Even that was an accidental assist.

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The Egyptian’s durability forms part of his case for a lucrative new contract. The forward line has tended to consist of Salah and two others since the break-up of the triumvirate of Sadio Mane, Roberto Firmino and him. The role of the second-choice right winger has tended to be a small one, given Salah’s primacy. But if Chiesa has a versatility, he also has a pedigree.

The Euro 2020 winner has the potential to be a £10m bargain. Yet if his transfer came with an element of risk, given his reputation for missing matches, the reality is he had played at least 33 games in seven of his eight previous seasons. Now he is on three, only one of them starts. The lone summer signing to arrive at Anfield, Chiesa could give an added dimension to their title tilt. Jota certainly can.

And it may have been notable that, after only five goal contributions from substitutes all season, Liverpool got two in one goal, Nunez setting up Jota on Saturday.

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The substitutes tended to be Klopp’s trump card last season. Slot has often changed games with his starters. And one reason why Liverpool’s injury list can be overlooked is that some of the absentees do not figure in the strongest side. Chiesa, if he is deemed Salah’s deputy, is a case in point.

But with the Italian and Jota fit again – and assuming they can stay fit – Slot could go from having one attacker in reserve to a trio. And with more gamechangers, it could be a gamechanger for him.