Liverpool boss Arne Slot. (Photo by DARREN STAPLES/AFP via Getty Images)placeholder image
Liverpool boss Arne Slot. (Photo by DARREN STAPLES/AFP via Getty Images) | AFP via Getty Images
The Liverpool boss gave his assessment on the 3-0 loss against Man City in the Premier League.
Arne Slott admitted that Liverpool failed to deal with Manchester City overloading the middle in their comprehensive defeat.
The Reds suffered a 3-0 loss at the Etihad Stadium as the Premier League champions virtually fell out of this season’s title race. Liverpool were dominated throughout the first half, with Erling Haaland missing a penalty before opening the scoring for City.
And while Virgil van Dijk had an equaliser disallowed, Pep Guardiola’s troops deservedly doubled their advantage in first-half stoppage-time through Nico Gonzalez. City rounded off their triumph in the second period through a fine Jeremy Doku strike.
Liverpool are eight points behind leaders Arsenal and four adrift of City. The Reds’ fifth league loss in six matches, with hopes that they had turned a corner after wins over Aston Villa and Real Madrid being curtailed.
What’s been said
And Slot confessed that Guardiola’s gameplan meant that Liverpool’s players lost their duels in the engine room. The Anfield head coach said at his post-match press conference: “It’s easy for players to win their duels if the gameplan and tactics are working. What I did against Villa and Madrid, we struggled now a lot with them bringing so many players into the centre of the pitch.
“It was difficult for some of our players then to make the right decisions. It wasn’t about my players not wanting to make duels, they had to run a lot because they were so much better on the ball than us. Our players were then sometimes too late.
“I would look to the gameplan first and foremost of us and them and not blame my players at all. In the second half, when we were doing better you could see could win much more duels. Then we were more than a few times able to win the ball, which didn’t result in a goal for us. But in the second half we definitely deserved a goal.”
“I would like to emphasise the fact being 2-0 down at half-time was a fair reflection of how the game went. But I’ve been on opposite side when my team was much better than the other team and 1-0 up and maybe not scored the second one and the other team gets a set-piece and it’s 1-1 and all of a sudden things change.
“This can happen in football. For me it was a wrong decision that this goal was not allowed, but I will not say because of that we lost the game. After 1-1, if City kept on playing like they did then we would have struggled as well.
“But I constantly felt if we could keep it to 1-0 down to half-time we could maybe adjust a few things, which was definitely necessary as we were constantly coming up two players short in the middle because Doku and O’Reilly gave us a lot of problems.
“1-1 would have been the biggest gift we could at half-time. In my opinion, the second half was different game but 2-0 down and 3-0 down it isn’t a good reflection of how things could have went at 1-1.”
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