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Liverpool battled to a 2-2 draw against Fulham in the Premier League after having Andy Robertson sent-off.
Arne Slot admitted that half-time was crucial for 10-man Liverpool to earn a share of the spoils against Fulham.
The Reds dropped points in the Premier League title race after a 2-2 draw against at Cottagers at Anfield. But it could have been a lot worse for Liverpool given they fell behind in the 11th minute before having Andy Robertson sent-off for denying a goalscoring opportunity six minutes later.
Slot was short of a natural left-back replacement for Robertson in his match-day squad. Second-choice Kostas Tsimikas is sidelined with an ankle injury while Conor Bradley, a right-sided full-back, has a hamstring issue. Therefore, the Liverpool head coach opted to move Cody Gakpo from the left-wing into defender but swiftly realisng that would not work.
Slot subsequently deployed Joe Gomez to the left-hand side and move Ryan Gravenberch to the rearguard alongside Virgil van Dijk. It was a tactic that paid off, with Gakpo bagging the equaliser in the 48th minute and Diogo Jota coming off the bench to level parity after Rodrigo Muniz gave Fulham the lead.
Speaking at his post-match press conference, Slot admitted that it’s hard to plan how to play with 10 men because of the various scenarios. But getting his message across inside the dressing room was crucial. The Liverpool boss said: “It always depends on the players you have available, how you are going to react to that. Are you one goal down, are you one goal up? So, that makes a difference. If you are one goal up, you might consider to defend with a lot of players, so then I might have considered to bring immediately a defender in. But if you are one goal down, you see differently. So first you take a look at the tactic board and you think, 'This might be a good option.' That's what we did for five minutes. But then looking at it, it looked better on a tactic board than on the pitch with Cody [Gakpo] being a left-back!
“So, we changed that after five minutes and our message cut across I think even better at half-time, where you can tell them even more clearer what we expect from them. And then it helps if you immediately score the 1-1. What doesn't help – we had great momentum – [was] that the game was again delayed for three, four or five minutes immediately after we scored the goal because they were on the ground and that happened a bit too much for us to keep the momentum going. Everybody is saying, 'Yeah, you've played quite a lot of time.' That's true, but the momentum is then like this if every time there's a treatment for an injury.”
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