Diogo Jota is ‘100 per cent’ ready to replace Luis Diaz for Liverpool tonight. The Colombian is out for the next few months.
News broke after the Arsenal game that Luis Diaz would be out until December. He’d left the pitch in the first half with a clear knee injury – now Liverpool must cope without him for a while.
Diogo Jota is now in line to play on the left, either in a 4-4-2 or a return to Jurgen Klopp’s 4-3-3. The Portuguese forward is certainly ready for the task.
“Well, I’m ready to play there and whichever position where the manager feels I’m important to the team,” Jota told a press conference yesterday. “And like always, as a striker, as a winger, as a no.10, I’ll be ‘on it’ with my 100% best.
“Because that’s the way I am. If it’s required that I play different positions, that’s what I will do.”
Diogo Jota to replace Luis Diaz
The Liverpool Echo report that Jota will indeed step in for Diaz tonight. It’s the obvious switch, but it does open up the second-striker role for someone else.
Again, we’re assuming Klopp sticks with the 4-4-2 that worked so well last week. Jota has been playing just off of Nunez in the system and if he’s moving left, someone must step in.
The two most likely choices are Harvey Elliott and Roberto Firmino. The former would play it more as a no.10, perhaps changing the system into a 4-2-3-1. Firmino would be a bit of a hybrid between the two but Klopp can’t make the choice based on who’s ‘best’.
Liverpool play Manchester City at the weekend, after all. Putting Jota, Nunez, Firmino and Mohamed Salah all out there at once would be an enormous risk – all of the Reds’ forward options starting just a few days before City.
What we know for sure is that Jota will replace Diaz well. Who replaces Jota, though, isn’t yet clear.
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