Arne Slot has lauded the "special" backing that supported Liverpool during the team's morale-lifting triumph over West Ham.
Second-half strikes from Alexander Isak and Cody Gakpo secured the Reds a 2-0 victory at the London Stadium on Sunday. It marked Liverpool's first away league success in more than two months and brought to an end a sequence of three consecutive defeats.
A dismal spell of nine defeats in the preceding 12 matches had intensified scrutiny on Slot's role as head coach despite guiding the club to a 20th title last season. However, the Reds manager received vocal support from the visiting contingent at West Ham both before and after the match, with chants from supporters acknowledged by the Dutchman.
"It says a lot about the club and fans that they were not only supportive of me but the whole team," said Slot.
"If you have such a run of form you are having and have an away game, and the away end is so full and supports the team from start to finish, including me, that is special.
"Not only after the 1-0 but 0-0 from start to finish. It tells you this club is always together, but maybe even more in difficult moments, and they appreciate even more what you have done for the club and support you, and that is what this makes the club special; to support someone when they are successful is easier than to support someone or a team when things are as tough as they are now."
Liverpool won on Sunday
Liverpool won on Sunday (Image: Ben STANSALL / AFP via Getty Images)
Liverpool secured just its fourth clean sheet in 13 Premier League matches this campaign to climb back into the top half of the table.
When questioned about his emotions as Gakpo found the net for the second goal during stoppage time, Slot revealed: “Relief, although I said immediately to my colleagues that it might be handball, so I wasn’t surprised it took a while (to be confirmed).
"I was happy when the referee pointed for the kick off that it was 2-0. In terms of results, it is of course very good, but there were also a few things similar then recent games of ours and a few things that were different.
"The things similar were, we couldn’t score our first chances, but the good thing was for the first time in many, many, many games, the first chance of the opponent didn’t go in as well. The best thing it was their only chance, and it was after 90 minutes.
“It’s happened so many times to us that the first chance the opponent has, it goes in. Then you get a completely different game as we saw so many times now.”
The Reds had broken the deadlock on the hour mark through Alexander Isak's maiden Premier League strike for the club, following Joe Gomez's lengthy delivery that had unsettled the West Ham backline, with Gomez making his first league appearance in 11 months.
“Not conceding a set-piece and actually scoring from one as it came from a long throw, it took a while, but these are things that are so important if you want to win a game of football,” said Slot.
“People might say we had more control and didn’t concede as much but it makes quite a difference when you don’t go 1-0 down after five minutes and have to chase the game, at 0-0 you are controlling the game and at 1-0 you are in control even more.”