A LOOK AT FEDERICO CHIESA'S SITUATION AT LIVERPOOL AS ARNE SLOT PLANS FOR LIFE WITH THE ITALY INTERNATIONAL ON BOARD NEXT SEASON 03:00, 17 May 2025 For a manager who has been keen to

get a look at some of his players on the fringes since becoming Premier League champions, Arne Slot has continued to largely overlook the offerings of Federico Chiesa. Rarely does a social

media post about the Reds' team news pass without plenty of debate around the omission of Chiesa and that was arguably never more prevalent than last week, when the Italian was left out

of the squad entirely for the visit of Arsenal. Slot made six changes for the recent trip to Chelsea but Chiesa still found his nose pressed up to the glass, watching on as an onlooker for

the attacker since he traded Liverpool for Juventus in August of last year. Only twice has Chiesa completed 90 minutes, with the Champions League dead rubber against PSV in January followed

by the dismal FA Cup exit at Plymouth Argyle the following month. Just 392 minutes across 13 appearances since his arrival paints the picture of a player who is very much down the pecking

order for the Reds and while that much is no surprise given the wealth of options available to Slot, the troubling part for Chiesa is how little he's featured since the title was

wrapped up last month. In 180 minutes played since, he has featured for just eight and the decision to leave him out of the squad for the visit of Arsenal has been interpreted as a head

coach who sees no use for the only signing of his time so far. That might be harsh and Slot has argued that his omission speaks more to the embarrassment of riches he has in his forward

department but Diogo Jota and Darwin Nunez have just 11 Premier League goals between them this term and neither have been anywhere top speed for some time now. Despite being overlooked, Slot

has doubled down on his insistence that Chiesa's future does not lie away from Anfield, claiming that his use of the phrase "or another club" when discussing his

player's credentials in his Friday press conference was a slip of the tongue. "No, that was lost in translation or I didn't say it in the way I meant it," Slot says.

"What I meant was that he is good enough to play for us, or a club of our standards. That is what I meant. It was a very positive thing and I didn't mean he should go to another

club. "But we are having here three players that are, in my opinion, doing so well this season that there was no reason not to play them. "And most of the time I had to pick one of

them, I couldn't pick Lucho, Cody and Mo together. So sometimes Lucho and Cody were not even playing. So that is more the reason than it is about him." Alarm bells could faintly

be heard as far back as October when Slot spoke in Leipzig about the versatile frontman essentially struggling to handle the intensity of the training sessions. At the time, there seemed

little need to rush the summer signing into anything that might have been too strenuous given he had no pre-season to call his own while Juve negotiated his exit. With Mohamed Salah in some

of the best form of his career, Luis Diaz and Cody Gakpo enjoying fruitful periods and Nunez and Jota jockeying for position as the No.9, there was never any need to force Chiesa into

something that might trigger a prolonged spell on the sidelines. But as we near the end of his first year on Merseyside, at no point has Chiesa threatened to move beyond his station of sixth

choice forward. Even for someone whose natural disposition seems to be a positive one, the lack of progress must be frustrating. Slot, however, is firm in his belief that Chiesa won't

be part of an end-of-term exodus at Anfield, claiming a full and uninterrupted pre-season for the Italian will be vital for him to come in from the cold. CELEBRATE LIVERPOOL'S PREMIER

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BUY THEM ONLINE HERE. POSTAGE AND PACKAGE COSTS APPLY. You can also buy our 48-page keepsake from when Liverpool confirmed the title with victory over Spurs HERE! And you can also order a

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24/25, with a double sided poster. Pre-order here: https://reachsportshop.com/special_edition/liverpool-fc-champ20ns-premier-league-winners-24-25/ "Does he have a future here? Yes,

definitely he has, yes," Slot says. "Definitely. I think everyone playing for us over here has a future over here. "Next season, if he comes back completely fit, which he has

hardly been for the first half-season but then afterwards he became fitter and fitter. "The next steps should have been playing time, which I couldn't give him. But I can give him

playing time in pre-season, so he can build himself up and then go even further. "But that was also one of the things, if you do so well - and it was the same with Konate and Virgil -

some people say maybe you should rest one or two once in a while. "I know for sure the chance of winning when I play them both is particularly high. So why would I take the risk of

rotating? Which I did against Plymouth and PSV and at some other moments. But yeah, pre-season gives them the chance to show themselves again." The former Fiorentina man was widely seen

as a low-risk signing with a huge upside last year but couching as a £12m steal always came with the caveat that Liverpool would need to get him up to the sort of speed he was at four years

ago for it to be considered something of a transfer masterstroke. Claims of interest from Napoli this week have been dismissed but a return to his homeland, where his reputation is at its

highest, may be a move that suits all parties at this stage. Having joined the Reds after the season was already underway, Chiesa has been made to play catch-up from day one and he seems to

be getting no closer to doing so. Article continues below Slot, though, is preparing to give Chiesa another bite at the cherry this summer in a bid to prove he belongs with the new Premier

League champions.