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More than a year into his tenure as Liverpool head coach, Arne Slot still has a few surprises up his sleeve.
The decision not to include Alexander Isak in his squad at all at Burnley caught more than a few people off guard. No one seriously thought he would start at Turf Moor, but to not even see him on the bench after he finally started working with his new teammates last week no doubt raised a few eyebrows.
After all, this is a striker that cost Liverpool a lot of money - a record fee in fact. Paying $169 million and then deciding to leave that same player out of your squad is certainly a bold strategy.
And up until the final moments of stoppage time, it felt like a decision that could come back to bite Slot. His reasoning before the game certainly made a lot of sense, but after seeing Federico Chiesa spurn a golden opportunity with a header moments after replacing Hugo Ekitike, you could start to see what the headlines would have been had the Reds dropped their first points of the season.
Thankfully, Liverpool got an unexpected helping hand - quite literally - from Hannibal Mejbri, allowing Slot to breathe a sigh of relief, and we can now look forward to what should be Isak’s debut on Wednesday against Atletico Madrid.
Don’t expect too much from him though. Slot is taking a cautious approach with his newest addition after a summer in which he has been starved of time on the pitch, and it might still be some time before we see him playing a proper role in Liverpool’s side.
Asked by Jamie Carragher on Sunday when we can expect to see Isak up to full speed with his teammates, Slot responded: "That's always difficult to say, up to full speed.
"What I can say is that normally in a pre-season, after one or two weeks you play your first 45-60 minutes, you build that up gradually.
"But that you do with proper training sessions during the week and now we hardly have any proper training sessions with the team because we play, like I just said, three games in seven days.
"So, where would he be? Second or third week of pre-season, I would say, so able to hopefully play during the week 45 minutes or more, but then two days later, as you know, we play Everton again.
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"It's going to be interesting for the performance staff, for us, to get the best out of him at the start but also to keep him available for the end."
Slot’s approach might prove to be a little frustrating for those supporters eager to see their new superstar striker in action, but it is ultimately the right thing to do - and there are already three members of Liverpool’s squad who prove that.
Once the action got underway at Turf Moor on Sunday, it proved to be another tough day for two of the Reds’ other summer additions. We all know about Milos Kerkez’s struggles, but Florian Wirtz also found it difficult to make an impact - as did the rest of his teammates, in fairness.
Those two players though haven’t yet hit the ground running since arriving at Anfield, even with a full pre-season behind them, showing just how difficult it can be to walk straight into a new team, even with the added advantage of having played in the Premier League, as in Kerkez’s case.
As good as Isak is, there is no guarantee that he’ll instantly be a hit with Liverpool, and spending some more time getting to know his teammates couldn’t hurt, having only met the majority of them on Friday.
More importantly though, Slot is looking after Isak’s fitness, and you only need to look at Alexis Mac Allister at the moment to see why that is so important.
Granted, if the Argentine did pick up an injury on Sunday, then that was down to the reckless nature of the challenge put in on him by Lesley Ugochukwu. Nevertheless, we haven’t seen the best of Mac Allister so far this season after he effectively began his pre-season a week or two later than everyone else.
Fans will no doubt be excited to see Isak make his debut for the club this week, but they will need to be patient with him. Slot’s cautious approach is the right way to do things, and it will hopefully pay off - even if it takes a little longer than hoped.
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