Gomez was forced off after just 25 minutes against Brighton because the defender suffered a muscle injury.
Slot said after the match liverpoolfc.com: “If I have a player who goes off with a muscle injury, like Joe, it is normally not a positive thing.
“I didn’t expect him to be in the selection next week [at Tottenham]but sometimes you get a positive surprise.
“People now maybe understand a little better why I was always so careful not to play so many games against him. I guess a lot of people thought, ‘If you have a defender, if you have a right full-back, why not play against him?’”
Szoboszlai was another player who left the match with a problem. He appeared to go over his ankle before coming off in the 83rd minute.
“It was his ankle,” Slot said. “It didn’t look great when I first saw him, but he has an incredible mentality, so let’s hope for the best.”
Furthermore, the head coach confirmed that Jeremy Frimpong would return to training next week after almost two months away with a hamstring injury.
Hugo Ekitike “couldn’t walk anymore”
Finally, Ekitike deployed up front at Anfield and for the second Premier League in a row, the 23-year-old scored twice.
He looked bright and was a constant threat, but he was released in the 78th minute when Alexander Isak replaced him up front.
After the match, Slot explained: “I think right before I dropped him off there was a moment. I don’t know what happened, but I think he could barely walk anymore because of the cramp.”
As a general rule, players in winter should ideally not cramp if they have 10 minutes to play.
However, it wasn’t the first time the Reds have suffered from cramps this season, with Milos Kerkez also requiring treatment late in the match against Brighton.
“What I see with him, and I see this with all the players we brought in this summer, is that they have to adapt to the Premier League with that intensity,” said Slot.
“All the players we have brought in are young players, except maybe Alex (Isak), but everyone else is very young.
“So adapting to the Premier League with that intensity – some of them had to adapt not to the Premier League, but to the Premier League and the Champions League – and I see them all making progress in that.
“So Hugo had cramps today, but I can assure you that he probably did twice as much as he did in a match at the beginning of the season when I also had to take him out with cramps, and that’s what this competition brings.
“If you can’t be that intense for so long, it’s so hard to win a game of football because the best players [and] athletes from all over the world play in this competition, and we try to prepare them better and better for it.
“And I can see the progress on most of our purchases, I think almost all of them, maybe all of them.”
Liverpool’s loss to Crystal Palace in the Carabao Cup leaves them without a quarter-final draw this week and now has seven days until their next match, away at Tottenham on December 20.
Hopefully the Reds will have fully recovered by then, with Conor Bradley’s return from suspension going some way to offsetting Gomez’s injury.
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