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Harvey Elliott celebrates with Mohamed Salah after Liverpool take the lead for the first time against Southampton(Image: PAUL ELLIS/AFP via Getty Images)

Arne Slot admitted it was difficult to name Harvey Elliott on the substitutes' bench for Liverpool's 3-1 win over Southampton.

It came just days after the young midfielder scored a last-gasp winner against Paris Saint-Germain.

Elliott's 87th-minute strike at the Parc des Princes on Wednesday night wasn't enough to earn him a first Premier League start of the season on Saturday afternoon as Slot made just three changes to the side that beat the Ligue 1 champions.



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But the 21-year-old was part of a half-time triple-change by the Liverpool head coach after his leaders fell behind to bottom-of-the-table Southampton following Will Smallbone's opener.

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But within nine minutes of Slot's change, the Reds had turned the game on its head thanks to Elliott's impetus and goals from Darwin Nunez and Mohamed Salah.

Salah then clinched a 3-1 victory with a late penalty to send Liverpool 16 points clear at the top of the Premier League.

And when asked by the ECHO if it was difficult to start Elliott on the bench after his Champions League heroics, Slot said: "It is always a difficult decision not to start Harvey, not to start Wata (Wataru Endo), not to start all the other ones I don't play.

"But if someone comes in for five minutes, touches his first ball and scores a goal and then you change your whole idea about all the line-ups you made before, that would be a bit out of line - a bit weird as well.

"He got 45 minutes today because he did so well in Paris.

But there's also a reason why I played so many times the other ones and all the time they deserved that trust.

"But today, if I could do it one more time over, I would have started it differently than I started today...but you don't know this in advance."

Slot, though, insisted there will be enough opportunities for Elliott to force his way into his plans this season if he continues performing at his current level.

"Yeah there is enough time, we play nine more games in the Premier League and hopefully a few more in the Champions League as well and one more in the League Cup," added Slot.

"What it is with him is also with other players; they are in competition with so many good players and that makes it sometimes difficult to make a line-up.

"But it always helps to bring in performances like this, for him but also for Wata.

He came in 15 minutes before the end again and showed how important he is for this team and the others as well.

"He trains really, he does this and - I said it many times about Wata and I can say the same about Harvey - he hardly gets any playing time but he keeps on going and then when your moment comes, you can finally show your quality.

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"And that is the biggest compliment I can give him, but also the biggest compliment is what he brings to the team is that he just keeps on going because I have experienced more than enough players who are in the same position as him or Wata and they start to do less and less and when you do play them you (journalists) probably don't ask me why I don't play them.

"This is the situation we want as a team and it makes it sometimes difficult for me, that's true."