Arne Slot explains why he really decided to play Curtis Jones at left wing for Liverpool against Aston Villa

Add as preferred source on Google

Liverpool were left to rue more dropped points on Wednesday after battling to a draw against Aston Villa.

The Reds had the chance to move 10 points clear at the top of the Premier League table with a win at Villa Park, but could not get over the line.

In isolation, the point is not necessarily a bad one for Liverpool. Plenty of teams have slipped up away at Villa this season.

Nevertheless, on the back of last week’s draw against Everton, some supporters will be very nervously eyeing the upcoming run of Liverpool fixtures.

For Arne Slot, the draw came as another frustration. After a tricky week, the Liverpool head coach would have wanted to have seen a little better from his team.

Having seen them struggle to get the better of Wolves on Sunday, Slot made one interesting change to his attack for the Villa clash. Curtis Jones came in on the left wing after serving a one-game suspension. And after watching Jones’ performance, Slot was asked to explain his thinking.

Arne Slot explains Curtis Jones change

Liverpool fans were not impressed by Jones’ display against Villa from the left of their attack.

It wasn’t that the 24-year-old played especially badly, but it was clear that his better work was all done when drifting to his more natural central role.

Nevertheless, when asked to explain why he used Jones in this manner during his post-match press conference, Slot insisted that he was pleased with what he saw.

“Result-wise, going 2-1 in at half-time, you could say it didn’t work,” said the Dutchman. “Performance-wise, it worked really, really, really well because we totally did not deserve to go in 2-1 down at half-time – again, in my opinion.”

READ MORE: Arne Slot admits Liverpool have suffered fresh injury blow ahead of Man City and Newcastle meetings

“The reason why we did this is because Lucho [Luis Diaz] played three games in seven days. I played him at Plymouth because I knew I had Cody [Gakpo] so I could switch them around if needed but then Cody got injured at Everton, he got a big knock, and then all of a sudden you have only one winger left.”

“So, that’s why for today we felt this could work,” Slot added. “And I felt it did if you look at the amount of chances we created and how we played the game.

“But result-wise you never know if you would have done it differently what might have happened but it wasn’t smart to play Lucho 90 minutes again.”

Bad news for Federico Chiesa

It is interesting to hear Slot say that he had ‘only one winger left’ after Cody Gakpo’s injury against Everton. Of course, this is not true.

Rather than playing Jones out of position on the left wing, Slot could quite easily have given Federico Chiesa a chance.

Yes, Chiesa was poor against Plymouth in his last outing, but if he’s never given game time, then how is he ever going to get up to speed.

Slot may well see the Italian more as a right-sided replacement for Mohamed Salah. But Chiesa has played plenty from the left and is arguably more natural on that side anyway.

That Slot chose Jones over Chiesa says just about everything about how the Liverpool boss sees his No.14 right now.