Don’t expect 90 mins from Isak right away - Slot - video Dailymotion

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Liverpool boss Arne Slot says it will take time for Alexander Isak to be match fit and not to expect 90 minutes from him right away as they prepare to face Burnley AXA Training Centre, Liverpool, UK

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00:00How ready is Alexander Isak to play for you and make his debut against Burnley?

00:04He's obviously got his first minutes playing for Sweden against Kosovo,

00:08but I'm also going to ask you what you make of the criticism he's received

00:11over the way things ended at Newcastle and what kind of impact that has had on him, if anything at all.

00:18First of all, I think the Swedish manager, Jondal Thomasson, deserves a big compliment,

00:26because he gets one of the best, maybe the best strikers in the world,

00:32and needs to play two very important games for his country,

00:35but understands that if he would play him twice 90 minutes

00:38then probably the player would have been injured for multiple weeks.

00:42And that's not always easy for a manager, that he takes care of the interests of a player,

00:48so he deserves a big compliment for that, and we will treat Alex the same as they did,

00:54so don't expect him to be every single game 90 minutes on the pitch,

00:59that's definitely not going to happen in the upcoming weeks.

01:01He missed a proper pre-season, I think he missed three or four months of team sessions,

01:09and so now we have to build him up gradually, with us playing so many games,

01:14hardly any training time.

01:15So that's going to be a challenge, but we've signed him not only for the upcoming two weeks,

01:19but we've signed him for six years, so yeah, this is what we have to keep in mind,

01:25and what the fans have to keep in mind if they see that I take him off at a certain moment,

01:30or I only bring him in for a small amount of minutes,

01:33that's all for the long-term fitness of the player.

01:36And the criticism?

01:37In football there's always criticism, so sometimes people cheer for you,

01:44so I think after he won the League Cup everyone was really happy with him,

01:49and in other moments you get criticised,

01:52this is part of his life, my life, our jobs,

01:56and now he's a player from us, and I'm really happy with that.

02:01Thank you very much.

Don’t expect 90 mins from Isak right away - Slot

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