Liverpool's Manager Offers No Excuses and Vows to Plot Way From Malaise

Arne Slot stated he had to “examine my own performance” after Liverpool endured a sixth loss in 7 English top-flight matches at home to Nottingham Forest and insisted he would find a solution from the title holders' slump.

Forest, in the relegation zone prior to the match, delivered the biggest victory at Liverpool's stadium in their history as the Merseyside club fell to an eighth loss in 11 matches in all competitions. The British record signing, Alexander Isak, was once more anonymous and the home side contended Murillo’s opener should have been disallowed for comparable grounds to the captain's disallowed effort versus City before the international break. But Slot conceded the buck stopped with him and made no excuses.

“Nobody wants to listen to me now speaking about refereeing decisions if you are defeated 3-0 at home to Forest,” said the Liverpool head coach. “I ought to look at myself first and my team, but it does show you how a score can alter the flow of a match. Before I was just waiting for us to net a strike. Afterwards we hardly created anything.

“Naturally there is a path forward, particularly with the talented footballers we have. Regardless if you win or lose when you look back you are always considering: ‘Where can we improve, where can we adjust?’ but that is different from doubting your abilities.

“I wish to stress I am responsible for the current losses. You are answerable when you are victorious but also responsible when you are defeated. I can not provide enough excuses for us to have the outcomes we have. That is not good enough and I am responsible for that.”

Liverpool’s performance fell apart as Slot made multiple offensive changes when pursuing the game. “It was the identical away at Forest last season,” he remarked. “I took Ibou [Ibrahima Konaté] off and put on the Portuguese forward and he scored immediately to equalize at 1-1. At that time it was courageous, currently it’s probably stupid.”

The Anfield side last lost two successive at Anfield league games by Forest in the sixties. The last time they lost back-to-back top-flight games by a 3-0 scoreline was in 1965.

The manager said: “It was extremely poor. Competing on home soil, losing 3-0 no matter which team you face is a terrible outcome. Unexpected if you look at the opening 30 minutes of the game. I haven’t seen us creating so many chances in the initial 30 minutes maybe the entire season, and the initial occasion they arrived in our box they found the back of the net.

“It did not happen at City, but in every other fixture we have been the controlling team and were able to generate opportunities. Recently it is almost constantly that we fail to convert our chances and the ones we concede go in.”

Tina Small
Tina Small

A geospatial analyst and cartography enthusiast with over a decade of experience in digital mapping and GIS applications.