NewsArne Slot offers update on Curtis Jones fitness following Lille win

The midfielder – who provided the assist for Mohamed Salah’s opener in the Champions League league-phase win – picked up the issue during the first half and was unable to continue following the break.

Slot did confirm, however, the substitutions of Ryan Gravenberch and Dominik Szoboszlai were pre-planned, while the decision to take off Conor Bradley was purely precautionary.

• Read our match report from Anfield here

He told his post-match press conference: “The idea was to take Dom and Ryan off at half-time, but Curtis unfortunately couldn’t continue, so that’s why Dom stayed [on] a bit longer.

“Conor, the idea was to play 90 but in the end you could see that it got tougher and tougher and tougher for him in terms of load, so you don’t want to take the risk of him getting injured in the last few minutes like it happened against [Real] Madrid.

“We wanted to win this game, but we were also aware of the fact that we had to manage the load because we would have been really, really, really unlucky if we’d have lost twice and still not been in the top eight.

“As we know now, I think 18 points would have been enough to play top eight, but now with 21 there’s no discussion anymore.”

Asked specifically about Jones’ fitness, Slot added: “There was a moment in the game where he felt [something] and he said let’s play for five more minutes and then see how it is, but [then] he said he had to go off at half-time.”