Arne Slot responds to Jack Grealish's Merseyside derby complaint - 'Completely correct'

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Arne Slot revealed he will ring the changes for Liverpool's Carabao Cup clash with Southampton before backing the referee's decision to add just three minutes of stoppage time during the Merseyside derby.

The Reds beat Everton 2-1 thanks to first-half strikes from Ryan Gravenberch and Hugo Ekitike, though Idrissa Gueye's effort on the hour mark gave David Moyes' side hope.

But one of the big talking points after the game revolved around the stoppage time, with an angry Jack Grealish adamant that the officials should have added on more time.

Slot had already hinted at changes after the weekend for Tuesday's encounter with the Saints.

And he then insisted that match officials got it right with their stoppage time call in the Merseyside derby before admitting that he would have actually preferred more time given his team were in the middle of a promising counter-attack when the full-time whistle went.

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"We can go through all of [the players], Wataru Endo and a few more, these are the players that need a game and we're happy that we have one," Slot said, via the Liverpool Echo.

"If we wouldn't have had one, we probably would have arranged a friendly in this week for these players because they need to play games as well to keep them ready whenever we need them.

"We've used quite a lot in the last three games because we thought we needed to keep this energy throughout all the three games – but not all of them.

Where in many other games when we need a goal, there's a lot, a lot, a lot of time-wasting going on, I can tell you."

Slot continued: "Last season we reached the final with these [changed] line-ups.

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