Arne Slot offers fitness update for Curtis Jones after Lille win
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Arne Slot has explained that Curtis Jones was taken off in the first half with a knock during Liverpool's 2-1 win over Lille at Anfield on Tuesday night.
The midfielder - who provided the assist for Mohamed Salah's opening goal in the Champions League group stage win - suffered a problem during the first half and was unable to continue after the break.
However, Slot confirmed that replacements Ryan Gravenberch and Dominik Szoboszlai had been planned in advance, while the decision to drop Conor Bradley was only preliminary.
He said in his post-match press conference: "The idea was to have Dom and Ryan come off at half-time but unfortunately Curtis couldn't carry on so Dom stayed on a bit longer. "Conor, the idea was to play 90 minutes but in the end we saw it was getting harder for him in terms of the workload so we didn't want to risk him getting injured in the last few minutes like he did against Madrid. "We wanted to win this game, but we also knew we had to manage the workload, because we would have been really, really, really unlucky if we had lost twice and still not been in the top 8.
"As we know now, I think 18 points would be enough to play in the top 8, but now with 21 points there's no question about it."
Asked specifically about Jones' fitness, Slot added: "There was a moment in the game where he felt [something] and said let's play another five minutes and see how it goes, but [then] he said he was going to show up in the first half."
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