With the Reds through to the knockout round, Slot has left many senior players at home.
The former Feyenoord coach said: "I’m happy in England, I’m happy in Liverpool with the team and the training ground, and everything that comes with that. I’ve had a great time here in Holland, football-wise but definitely in my private life as well, so it’s always nice to be back. Not at the club I’m supporting, but nice to be back and speak a bit of Dutch once in a while as well!
"They don’t need to prove themselves, we know what the quality is for the players that are going to play tomorrow. We are playing, like all the teams in Europe, many, many, many games and these players are ready. All the ones that are left behind could have played tomorrow but for the long term – so, it doesn’t tell you anything about the short term, doesn’t tell us anything about Saturday’s game – but for the long term, if you look back at our season, it has been almost every time after three or four or five weeks we gave them the break during the week when there was a League Cup or an FA Cup (game), if there was a moment for them to get some freshness back we have always done that.
"It took me a while to understand this new (Champions League) format. I always say when I think I’m 100 per cent sure, I use ‘99.9’ but now I can say I’m 100 per cent sure that it doesn’t matter at all if we end up one or two (in the table) because we will play 14, 15, 16, 17 and then in the end it’s a draw (for) which of the teams we are going to face.
"So, this is a game for us – because we are now No.1 or No.2, we cannot drop to No.3 – that has no importance of result coming to the league table. But a very wise man once said to me, ‘I have never seen anything good coming from losing a football game’ so we are not going into the game tomorrow trying to lose the game, we will do everything we can to try to win it, of course.
"The second thing is that because we mainly start with 13 or 14 players that have shared most of the playing time, the ones that haven’t played a lot it’s very useful for them to have 90 minutes. Because if we do get into injury problems, these players will have a bit of game rhythm then as well. So, it’s a choice that we’ve made for the long term. It doesn’t tell you anything about the results in the short term but definitely it helps us for the long term."