Diogo Jota has featured in each of the last eight games for Liverpool, and Arne Slot has explained why he is now “ready” for 90 minutes after his first since injury over the weekend.
Jota was not included in the list of players rested for the FA Cup tie against Accrington Stanley. Instead, he played the full 90 minutes, scored and donned the captain’s armband for the first time.
It was the first time since October 5 that the 28-year-old was on the pitch for the first and last whistle due to the rib injury that kept him sidelined for 11 matches.
Supporters will have quickly noticed how careful the Reds were easing him back into action, with six successive appearances off the bench that were never more than 32 minutes.
Jota was back in the starting lineup at Tottenham in midweek and played 60 minutes before keeping his place on Saturday, a strategic re-introduction that Slot explained to reporters.
“All of them (the players) have 80 percent the same programme and then the last 20 percent is for every player individual,” Slot said when asked if Jota had a special programme to help keep him fit.
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“They do individual work in the gym as well. It’s not only for him that we have a special programme, we try to have a special programme for all the squad players we have.
“It’s true, like all the others, he’s someone I like to have in my squad, I like to have him available.
“When it comes to building up his match fitness, you also saw that it went from 30 minutes to 30 minutes to a bit more, bit more.
“Now he is ready to play 90, and that’s a good thing because we have to play many games in the upcoming weeks and it’s nice to have him available.
“Hopefully it stays like this for the last four or five months.”
You are not the only one hoping for that, Arne! Keeping Jota fit has always been a key to success and with so many unlucky injuries, here’s hoping his luck has finally changed.
We are, however, unlikely to see him in the XI at Nottingham Forest as Mohamed Salah, Cody Gakpo and Luis Diaz were all rested over the weekend.
Jota ‘works really hard’
With Jota finishing Saturday’s game with the captain’s armband after Trent Alexander-Arnold passed it on, Slot was then asked about the qualities the Portugal international offers.
He said: “A hard worker, what you see on the pitch as well, tries to become a better player every single day.
“Is a player that is, in my opinion, good in both parts so he’s a threat when he’s attacking but for a No. 9, like Chris Wood, he works really hard as well.
“That’s modern football, you need to have 11 players that work really hard. Back in the days when I played you could have a No. 10, like me, that didn’t do too much without the ball.
“In modern football that’s impossible if you want to compete.
“Jota is an experienced player, that’s one of the reasons he wore the armband. I think he served the club the longest from the players that were in the team at that moment.
“So let’s hope he stays fit!”
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