Liverpool boss Arne Slot has stressed that one of his players had a ‘difficult pre-season’ but is getting fitter and fitter and will be on display on the pitch in the coming weeks.
Slot had a summer of only limited transfer business at Liverpool, though the Reds did raise cash from selling Sepp van den Berg, Fabio Carvalho and Bobby Clark, with Giorgi Mamardashvili and Federico Chiesa bought.
Juventus were keen to move Chiesa in the summer and the winger was forced to train alone during pre-season as he waited for a move.
During the last week of the summer window, Liverpool registered their interest in the winger and agreed a deal with Juventus.
On Tuesday, Chiesa made his debut for Liverpool in the Champions League against AC Milan, where he came on from the bench for the last few minutes of the game.
Slot pointed out that Chiesa is lacking match fitness due to his lack of proper pre-season training with Juventus, but claims that he is getting fitter and fitter.
The Reds boss also added that the winger will need minutes to regain his sharpness but has to compete with the players in his position and he is confident that Chiesa will prove to be a good asset for the club.
“He gets fitter and fitter. He had a difficult pre-season because he was not always able to train with the first team at Juve”, Slot said on beIN SPORTS.
“He had to train a lot on his own.
“Then it takes a bit of time to go to your match fitness and it is getting better and better and he needs playing minutes now, but he has competition from some good wingers as well.
“So let’s see when we are going to use him, but he is going to be a big asset for us, a very good player for us, that is clear; that is what we knew before we signed him and that is also what we see on the training ground.”
Liverpool have a game against Bournemouth at the weekend and Chiesa will be eyeing a spot in Slot’s starting line-up for the game.
