Every word from Arne Slot on Alisson Becker injury, Ibrahima Konate form and Mohamed Salah problem

Liverpool head coach Arne Slot has addressed the media ahead of his side's visit to Chelsea this weekend, where the Reds are looking to bounce back from two defeats in a row.

Earlier in the week, Liverpool followed up a dismal showing at Crystal Palace with a 1-0 loss in Europe against Galatasaray. Here is everything that Slot said ahead of the trip to Stamford Bridge in the late Saturday game...

On the fitness of Alisson Becker, Hugo Ekitike and Federico Chiesa: "Alisson is not a part of the squad tomorrow, and he’s not going to travel to Brazil as well for the national team. So, he will be out for Saturday.

"Hugo is going to train today again and let’s see where he is, and the same can be said for Federico. We have to wait and see after the session where exactly they are.

"[The Alisson timescale] depends also on how fast a recovery goes. So, Saturday it’s clear, he’s not going to play for Brazil, and I would be surprised if he would be there in the first game after the international break.

"But from there on, sometimes things can go a bit faster or a bit slower. It’s always difficult to say the amount of days and weeks, but for the upcoming games he will not be part of us or the Brazil team."

On the impression Giorgi Mamardashvili has made since arriving: "I think we've seen against Southampton how well he's adjusted. We knew that we were bringing in a very good goalkeeper.

"But when he plays his first game, that's always the best way of seeing that he's adjusted well or not — and I think we've seen in that game that he's adjusted really well to our goal, which is not a surprise because he's a quality goalkeeper.

"Now he can do what Caoimh [Kelleher] had to do so many times in the past, replacing Alisson — hopefully in a way Caoimh did so many times before."

On the reaction he has seen from his players: "If the reaction is after you lose against Palace, you lose another game, you can argue if that is positive. But I saw a team that wanted to try, from the first second until the last second, everything to get a result.

"Different to the Palace game, we won much more second balls, we were — like in the Palace game — close to a result. And I've said many times that last season the margins are so small, and that's the same this season again and we are trying to find the way that is not about luck or bad luck or is not about a set-piece goal scored or against.

"That we are just better than that, that it doesn't matter if Hugo Ekitike goes one-on-one to the goalkeeper, he gets twice or three times a pull on the shoulder but he does everything to stay on his feet, like our players mainly do.

"One minute later in the other 18-yard box, a player feels this, goes to the ground as if it was the worst hit he ever had and the referee gives a penalty. Again, this can happen and we should be better than that, that it doesn't matter if you are lucky or [have] bad luck or [are] smart or not smart, if you score a set-piece goal or you concede two, like against Palace.

"By the way, if we would have had the referee that we had against Galatasaray, we wouldn't have lost against Palace because this one blew his whistle exactly after eight minutes! But again, that has nothing to do with the current results. We need to do better and that's what we're going to try."

On Alexander Isak's settling-in period: "I said to him when he started that the difficult thing will be you will have your appearances, like you just said, but if you add the minutes together, [he] probably only had two or three 90-minute games.

"That is what we inherited from the situation of him not being with the team in Newcastle and we knew this before, so it's not an excuse. He already scored a goal, he gets fitter and fitter, but the main thing is he adjusts to his teammates and the teammates adjust to him.

"The more he plays together, the better things will work. He had a great counter movement in the Palace game, where in the end the midfielder didn't see that and he already played the ball to the right. If he would have seen it, he would have been one-on-one to the goalkeeper. So, these are things you get if you play more together.

"Playing more together has been a bit harder than last season because of Alexander Isak, because of [Alexis] Mac Allister, because of Conor Bradley, that Dominik Szoboszlai has played on eight, on 10, on right full-back for the reasons I just said.

"But we are, in my opinion, too focused on this season, but the last part of last season had a lot of similarities with the start of this season — with one exception that [in] the second part of last season we scored seven set-pieces, which led to a lot of wins, and this season we've conceded four, I think.

"So, we play tomorrow [against] Chelsea, I think they've scored more than 50 per cent of their goals from set-pieces. So, this is the new reality in the Premier League and we were doing this really well [in the] second part of last season. This season, we have had many chances from set-pieces as well — unfortunately we didn't score yet."

On working harder on set-pieces or if it's a case of needing more luck: "What I just said, we've been very close to scoring [from] set-pieces this season already. Ibou [Konate], a big chance against Galatasaray and a big chance against Palace.

"So, I'm very happy about the amount of chances we generate from set pieces, but we haven't scored yet and is that luck, bad luck? At this moment of time, I would say we are a bit unlucky. If it just keeps on going throughout the whole season, it might have to do with other things as well.

"But what I'm trying to say is, open-play goals [in] the second part of last season and the first part of last season is the main difference. I don't think we do things different. I do see teams doing a lot of things different to us.

"So, the first part of last season Jurgen [Klopp] gave me a lot of gifts but one of the gifts he also gave me was ending up third the year before and fifth the year before and him being so well known that a new manager came in and everybody thought, 'Oh, let's start to play against Liverpool'.

"And teams played in a completely different way in the first half of the season against us than they did when we were top of the league after half of the season and when we were top of the Champions League after the first part of the season.

"And I can see this going now into this part of this season. We have to find answers to that. Last season, one of the answers was a set-piece, like many teams unlock a low block with set-pieces. And this season we haven't done that yet."

On Conor Bradley and Jeremie Frimpong's reaction to Dominik Szoboszlai being used at right-back: "I don't think [they are frustrated] at the moment because Conor Bradley has been out with an injury in pre-season that brought him into the season with an injury.

"And Jeremie Frimpong the same, he has been out with an injury as well. I would be surprised if players are complaining that they don't play if they are injured. That would be something new to me. Yes, they've come back from their injuries but, like Alexander Isak, we don't believe it's possible if you've been out for three or four weeks with an injury that you can play three games in a week.

"Because you're not prepared for that. That's why we had to adjust in that position with Dominik Szoboszlai, which he has done very, very, very well, except for the moment where we conceded the penalty maybe. But that is one moment in many minutes he's played there."

On Mohamed Salah's form: "I think also over there, I see the same as the second part of last season, where he scored 12 goals, five from penalties [and] one from a set-piece, so six open-play goals.

"He is part of a team that faces different opposition than the first half of last season. To make that maybe a little bit more of an insight, if you compare how we won the away game against Man United, where they tried to play out from the back and we took the ball off them three times, to how United played at Anfield, where [Andre] Onana only went long, then that is one of the answers why it is more difficult for us to score open-play goals.

"Mo has a part of this, already you could see this in the second half of last season and the first part of this season. But now you are focused on Mo, the next time you are focused on Florian [Wirtz] then you are focused on Cody [Gakpo]... what I'm trying to say is we don't score as many open-play goals anymore as we did in the first part of last season.

"This is something we work hard very hard on. The more we will play together in the new set-up, the better that will go, but we still struggled a bit to find enough goals from open play in the second part of last and the first part of this season."

On Ibrahima Konate's performances so far this season: "What I think is if you are losing a game of football, as we did against Galatasaray and against Palace, then it doesn't help if you lose a ball a few times very easily.

"He has been one of them, definitely not the only one because against Galatasaray I think apart from the penalty they created three or four moments and all three or four from us losing a very simple ball without any pressure, which happened to him once in the Crystal Palace game and once against Galatasaray.

"If you then lose a game of football, there's so much focus on that moment and then all of a sudden [the] 90 minutes have been very, very poor, which is not the way I analyze a game. Especially not afterwards where I have the time to analyse, to watch it one more time, and see what we did well and what we did wrong.

"In the last two games, it has been obvious and clear we've made a few errors, not only him but also others, that we're not used to. If you do things people are not used to and you lose a game a football then normally he, other ones and the manager gets criticized."