Liverpool manager played down the severity of Hugo Ekitike’s injury within the wake of Liverpool’s damaging defeat against Brighton.
Already without Mohamed Salah and Aleksander Isak, the Reds were rocked early on on the Amex Stadium when their France international striker went down in agony following a collision with James Milner.
The summer signing from Eintracht Frankfurt was clearly in pain as he limped to the sidelines where he received further treatment.
Ekitike attempted to play on but was unable to proceed and was replaced by Curtis Jones after only eight minutes.
The 23-year-old had been called as much as Les Bleus squad ahead of the upcoming friendlies against Brazil and Colombia but may now be forced to withdraw.
Speaking about his centre forward’s injury, Slot said: ‘The players and the fans know that there is barely eight games to go to qualify for the Champions League and each game you may have to miss is something you’re upset about.
‘Him going off and never having the ability to help the team – it’s only a little bit of bad luck. It isn’t like he shall be out for 3 months but it surely is bad enough that he wasn’t capable of proceed.
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‘It was a blow for him and a blow for us.’
After their midweek morale-boosting win over Galatasaray, Liverpool would have hoped to construct further momentum on the south coast.
As an alternative, they delivered one other insipid, disjointed display that yielded a 2-1 defeat and has put their hopes of qualifying for next season’s Champions League in major jeopardy.
‘First half was an equal game. It was an enormous blow for us that certainly one of our two strikers that we now have available with Hugo [Ekitike] and Alex [Isak] was already not here and the opposite one has to go off after one or two minutes – that is generally not helpful, especially while you have a look at how well Hugo played Wednesday,’ added Slot.
‘The primary half was equal and the second half, Brighton were the higher team on the pitch.’
Danny Welbeck’s brace ultimately proved decisive because the outgoing Premier League champions succumbed to their tenth defeat of the campaign.
Slot said: ‘It is obvious that we now have lost a number of points after playing in Europe. I even have tried to clarify a number of times already why that is but today we even have to provide credit to Brighton. Within the second half, they were the higher team on the pitch.
‘What I assumed was, you won’t need 24 points to qualify and hopefully I’m right because we aren’t capable of get 24 points anymore.
‘We kept trying, within the second half we were close but they were closer to attain the third one than we were the second. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough after per week like this.’
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