Arne Slot Gives Honest Verdict on Federico Chiesa’s Liverpool Performance and Why He Played as a Striker vs Brighton

Federico Chiesa was handed his first full Premier League start as Liverpudlians suffered a 3-2 defeat away to Brighton & Hove Albion.

Arne Slot has provided insight into his decision to position Federico Chiesa as Liverpool’s central striker during his full league debut.

Since arriving from Juventus for a fee of £10 million in the summer, the Italian forward has had limited chances to impress. Chiesa, who has generally been sixth in the pecking order among Liverpool’s attacking options, had only made five appearances from the bench as the Merseyside club secured the Premier League title.

However, with the league crown already secured three weeks earlier, Chiesa was finally included in the starting XI for the midweek fixture at the AMEX Stadium. Although typically deployed as a winger, he was instead used in a central role during the 3-2 loss. Chiesa featured for 64 minutes before being replaced.

Slot justified the tactical choice by highlighting Chiesa’s natural instinct for finding the net, saying his primary strength lies in goal-scoring—a trait the Liverpool boss sought to take advantage of.

“I think the biggest quality Federico has is scoring goals. So the more you get him in and around the box, the bigger chance it is for him to score a goal. He got a good chance just before Mo had his big chance.

“Mo assisted to Federico and for him to have an open shot from the 18-yard box is for Federico a very good chance because he’s such a great finisher. But [it was] well defended by [Jan Paul] van Hecke, who blocked that ball.

“I think he did even more than I could expect from him. Because if you haven’t played throughout the whole season, hardly ever had any starts, and then to play Brighton away – which is which is a very good team, No.8 of the league that can bring in Mitoma 20 minutes before the end, that tells you everything about this league – and then for him to be out for so long and play a game like this is more than I could expect from him.”

Liverpool began brightly, with Harvey Elliott finishing off an impressive team move in the ninth minute. Brighton responded through Yasin Ayari, but Dominik Szoboszlai’s strike in stoppage time saw the Reds regain the lead before the interval.

However, Liverpool were unable to build on their advantage in the second half. Mo Salah squandered a clear opportunity, allowing Brighton to stay in contention. Kaoru Mitoma brought the Seagulls back on level terms, and substitute Jack Hinshlewood netted the winner with just five minutes left on the clock.

On the game, Slot said: “A great game of football. Two teams that wanted to play, two teams that wanted to win, had no intentions to do things that people normally don’t like to see if they watch a game of football, so no time-wasting, no tumbling.

“Two teams that were just for almost 100 minutes trying to win a game of football and with some brilliant individual moments. I’ve seen a few from us but the lead-up to the 2-2, the ball from the goalkeeper towards that midfielder that pretended to play the ball to the outside and then played [to] his midfielder was a great moment from them, and then the lead-up to the 3-2, the way Mitoma bounced that ball behind his standing leg towards the midfielder that came underneath him. [They] were from their perspective great moments, and I think there were many of those moments during the whole game from both sides. So, [a] joy to watch, unfortunately not with the result we wanted.”

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