Thomas Frank has hit back at Arne Slot after the Liverpool head coach criticised Micky van de Ven for a “reckless” challenge that left Alexander Isak with a fractured leg.
Frank said Van de Ven’s attempt to prevent Isak from scoring in Liverpool’s 2-1 win at Tottenham was the “natural reaction” of a true defender and that his player had spoken to the Sweden international to apologise.
Liverpool will be without their record £125m (€143m) signing “for a couple of months”, Slot confirmed on Tuesday. Isak had surgery on Monday to repair an ankle injury that includes a fractured fibula.
The operation went well but Slot remains angry over the challenge that trapped Isak’s left leg and caused the fracture. There is also bewilderment at Liverpool that the tackle went unpunished by the referee, John Brooks, and the video assistant referee, Stuart Attwell, in a game in which Spurs had Xavi Simons and Cristian Romero sent off.
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“It was a reckless challenge,” Slot said. “I’ve said a lot about the tackle of Xavi Simons, which for me was completely unintentional. I don’t think you will ever get an injury out of a tackle like that. But the tackle of Van de Ven, if you make a tackle like that 10 times, 10 times there is a serious chance the player gets a serious injury.”
In response, Frank strongly defended Van de Ven. “I’m obviously disagreeing in many ways,” the Spurs head coach said. “We are talking about a defender in Micky van de Ven that will do everything he can to avoid the goal.
“So it’s a transition. So he’s sprinting back in. There’s a ball slid down the side and he does everything he can to see if he can block that shot. So he’s sliding. Unfortunately, Isak plants his foot straight there and that makes it look worse than it is. I think that would be a natural reaction for any defender.
“I’ll put it this way: if my defenders don’t do that, then I don’t think they are true defenders. So I don’t see that at all. “Normally, you haven’t seen any reckless challenges from Micky. As I remember it, he’s a very fair and competitive player.
“So that’s one thing. The other thing, you also know that the two players have sorted it out. They have spoken. So that’s a good sign of how they sorted it out.”
Slot expects Isak to feature before the end of the season but admits the injury is a major setback for a player who has endured a difficult start to his Liverpool career. The 26-year-old’s opener against Spurs was only his third goal for the club and his impact has been hindered by fitness problems.
Slot said: “I am confident he can play a part in the season. It has been a really challenging and difficult period for him. He joined a new club, he was very excited and you want to show immediately all the qualities that you have. But that was simply impossible.
“Maybe no one understands but if you have not trained for three or four months on a serious level with the team and you are playing in this league you need to be on top of your game to impact a game. That took, as we all knew, months before we could bring him there because there was no preseason, just games, games, games and no time to train.
“We always knew it would take him time and that is why he is so unlucky that he is now injured because we all saw with his goal at West Ham, with this goal [against Spurs], that he got closer and closer to the player he was last season at Newcastle.”
Conor Bradley was also injured in the win at Spurs and is rated “50-50” by Slot to return against Wolves on Saturday. Cody Gakpo may be involved against the Premier League’s bottom club, having missed the past three games with a muscle problem, but Joe Gomez and Wataru Endo remain on the sidelines.
Spurs have announced the departure of one of Frank’s assistant coaches, Matt Wells, who has left to become the head coach of the Colorado Rapids in Major League Soccer. Frank will replace him, although not straight away, and said that in the short term it would be up to his other assistants, Justin Cochrane, Andreas Georgson and Cameron Campbell, to step up. – Guardian
