Arne Slot has lauded the arrival of a new signee, Alexander Isak, describing him as “arguably the best striker in the world”.
The Slot, however, warned he would be carefully integrated into the squad following a disrupted pre-season.
The Premier League champions secured Isak from Newcastle on transfer deadline day in a British-record £125 million ($169 million) deal, bolstering their already formidable attacking options.
New Telegraph reports that Isak’s signing capped a summer outlay of over £400 million, through the champions’ late bid to land Crystal Palace.
Slot said, “A lot of things happened on the last day (of the transfer window), which is not always the situation, because last season we hardly did anything during the whole window.”
Slot commended Sweden coach Jon Dahl Tomasson for carefully managing Isak’s fitness during the international break.
READ ALSO
The 25-year-old, yet to feature for his club this season, was limited to a late cameo in the 2-2 World Cup qualifying draw with Slovenia and came off the bench again in a 2-0 loss to Kosovo.
“He gets one of the best, maybe the best striker in the world, and needs to play two very important games for his country, but understands that if he were to play him twice for 90 minutes, then probably the player would have been injured,” Slot said.
“And that’s not always easy for a manager to take care of the interests of a player, so he deserves a big compliment for that. And we will treat Alex the same as they did, so don’t expect him to be every single game 90 minutes on the pitch.
“That’s definitely not going to happen in the upcoming weeks. He missed a proper pre-season, I think he missed three or four months of team sessions, so now we have to build him up gradually, with us playing so many games, hardly any training time.”
Speaking ahead of Sunday’s clash with Burnley, Slot dismissed criticism of Isak’s push to leave Newcastle, despite the striker still having three years left on his contract.
“I think it would be a bit ridiculous if I’m going to deny that we were close to signing him,” he said. “That’s so out in the open, that would be ridiculous.
“These things happen in football; it happened to our players maybe in the past as well, that they thought they were so close on signing somewhere else, and then in the last moment, things changed
Slot, chasing a record 21st English league crown with Liverpool, noted that he has sufficient options in defence.
He said, “It’s a pity, not only for us but also for the player, I think,
“But he’s in a good place playing at Palace, where he won the Community Shield and the FA Cup, with a very good manager as well. So let’s see what the future brings for him and for us.”
