So far during his Liverpool tenure, Arne Slot has had little to complain about.
The anomalous Nottingham Forest result will still sting, but his side is leading the Premier League table and has won six out of six in Europe. Liverpool is more than deserving of its position in both competitions and the improvement in players like Ryan Gravenberch and Luis Diaz has been clear. Mohamed Salah is arguably the best player on the planet at the moment and there is no one better than the Reds as a team.
Still, though, Slot wasn't pleased as he watched his side win 1-0 at Girona. Standing on the touchline at the Estadi Montilivi, he wasn't content with what he was seeing, even if Diaz drew a foul in the second half and Salah emphatically dispatched the resulting penalty. "The result was not of our standards," he bluntly said live on TNT Sports. He wants an improvement, and quickly.
Christian Pulisic was the last player to score a Champions League goal against Liverpool and that was three minutes into matchday one. More than 500 minutes later, Slot's side has kept clean sheets against Bologna, RB Leipzig, Real Madrid and Girona, largely looking in control against every team it plays.
In eastern Spain, however, the host did offer a threat - mainly because Liverpool allowed it to. Alisson Becker had to make several good interventions, even if Girona was never fully convincing in attack with Bryan Gil and Arnaut Danjuma lacking a clinical edge.
"If you play against a team that has such a good idea about football, knows how to bring the ball out from the back - like some other teams we faced recently, like [Manchester] City or Real Madrid - then you need to be so intense if you want to make it difficult for them," Slot said in his press conference.
"But if every time you are waiting a few seconds before you press and if you do press, you are so easily outplayed, then this team can cause you a lot of problems. That's what they've shown throughout the whole Champions League campaign, except for [against] PSV Eindhoven away.
"I almost feel sorry for them because they deserved so much more in this Champions League campaign than the three points they have until now. But we have an incredible goalkeeper."
This was as angry as Slot has been with his team's performance since he arrived in the summer. But it shows his perfectionist nature - and his burning desire to further improve - that he wants even more. You could make the argument that Liverpool didn't play well but still did enough to win a European away game without conceding, but Slot opted not to take that view.
Slot has led Liverpool to another win
Slot has led Liverpool to another win (Image: Photo by Liverpool FC/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
It was a clever move, too, to lambast his players and demand more from them after a win. Doing so after some dropped points might have felt like a scolding; this was more of a warning designed to act against complacency.
In the Premier League, Chelsea is not that far behind and Manchester City and Arsenal remain capable. In the Champions League, it will likely be an English team, Real Madrid or Bayern Munich who offers the biggest threat. Liverpool is rightly the favorite in both competitions, but Slot needs his team's results to continue.
With a reputation for being cool, calm and collected, this was a timely message. Nothing is won yet for Liverpool, but it remains in a far better position than he ever could have dreamt of. If ever there was a good time to lay down a marker, it is now.