Arne Slot admitted he ignored the advice of his performance staff regarding Florian Wirtz as the Liverpool playmaker starred in a 2-0 win over West Ham United.
The Germany international had missed the previous two games after returning from the international break with an injury concern.
Despite that, Wirtz was restored to the starting lineup at the London Stadium, where goals from Alexander Isak and Cody Gakpo secured a vital victory for the Premier League champions.
Wirtz arguably delivered his best Premier League performance since his £116million summer move from Bayer Leverkusen.
Operating in an advanced midfield role, he was supported by Dominik Szoboszlai, Ryan Gravenberch and Alexis Mac Allister as Liverpool dominated the engine room.
Slot was cautious not to overpraise Wirtz but admitted he was impressed with the playmaker’s impact.
He revealed he went against the recommendations of his fitness coaches, who had advised substituting Wirtz earlier than the 75th-minute change that saw Curtis Jones replace him.
“The team played a very good game,” the Liverpool head coach said.
“Recently I’ve been asked a lot about individuals when maybe they’ve played a game not of their usual standards and I’ve pointed out the team every single time.
“After a very positive performance from Florian, I can acknowledge that but I also want to emphasise the team performance was much better.
“We tried to create an extra midfielder and he was very important for us to find that extra midfielder every time.
“He was good when he made a dribble, he was good with his one-touch passes, he played one ball to Cody, which then doesn’t lead to a shot, but we had many of those moments and he was part of many of them.
“Performance staff were constantly telling me ‘he needs to go out’ because he’d be out for one-and-a-half weeks and had only trained once, so to a certain extent it was maybe a bit of a risk to keep him in the team, but some situations ask for an exception, and today was one of them.”
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