Rooney slams Arne Slot with brutal Ruben Amorim point - "he'd be slaughtered"

Liverpool boss Arne Slot has come in for criticism from Wayne Rooney following the Reds' 1-0 defeat to Galatasaray in the Champions League on Wednesday night

Wayne Rooney has criticised Arne Slot for his confusing decisions at Liverpool, suggesting that Ruben Amorim would be "slaughtered" for doing the same. Despite guiding the Reds to Premier League glory last season, Slot's side have struggled to replicate their form this campaign.

Even though they're currently leading the league, Liverpool are heading into this weekend's match against Chelsea on the back of consecutive losses to Crystal Palace and Galatasaray. The Reds suffered a 1-0 defeat in Turkey following a series of unexpected team selections.

Midfielder Dominik Szoboszlai - who gave away the decisive penalty - was surprisingly started at right-back, while Jeremie Frimpong was positioned as a winger. While Slot undoubtedly has a lot of goodwill at Anfield, Manchester United legend and former Everton forward Rooney has taken him to task, arguing that under-fire Amorim would be facing severe backlash if he had made similar errors.

On the BBC's Wayne Rooney Show, he commented: "I thought they [Liverpool] were really poor. I think the worry for me would be, they're losing the game and it looked like even with still quite a bit of time left to go, he just put every attacking player on the pitch and said like 'go and figure it out'.

"And then, it could have got a lot worse for Liverpool during the game because with the amount of times they gave the ball away at the back and losing it and getting broke on and Alisson getting injured.

"I think when you win the league like Arne Slot did with Liverpool last season then sometimes some of the decisions you make get overlooked.

"I think his decision to play a midfield player at right-back and a right-back and right-wing. For instance, if that was Amorim at Manchester United, he'd get absolutely slaughtered."

Slot outlined his reasoning behind the team changes in Turkey and insisted that several players missing pre-season had left him with little choice.

He said: "What you see is, and I think I explained this many times, is that there are a few players from us that missed pre-season so you simply cannot play them every single [game].

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"Well, you can but then that could become a risk of players becoming injured. We have seen this more and more because the demands go up more and more, and if the demands go up you have to prepare players for these demands.

"That means that it is not always that I want to rotate but sometimes I need to because a player is not ready to play three times 90 minutes in seven or eight days.

"I like my squad so much, but we don't have 25 or 26 [players], so if we end up with two, three or four injuries, 15 or 16 players, where Rio and Trey are two of these 15 or 16, then need to play almost all the minutes and then things can become complicated.

"But this is a decision we have made together, I completely believe in this, because if you have 25 [players] it's very hard to manage your squad. But as a result of that, with Hugo, Alex, Conor and Mac Allister not having the pre-season a player should have, that also results in the fact that I cannot play them every time."