In the Premier League match where Liverpool lost 2-1 to Manchester United, Liverpool manager Arne Slot attended the post-match press conference.
Q: What do you think of the result, and where do you think the team went wrong today?Slot: First, the result. Second, we fell behind 0-1 early. Manchester United have many high-quality players, and they signed several new ones this summer. If they set up a low block away and use long balls frequently, the worst-case scenario is conceding early—and this greatly boosts their confidence.
Before, if someone had told me we could create 8 to 10 clear-cut chances against a Manchester United side playing like this, even when 0-1 down, I would have thought it impossible. But it happened today. So the second issue is that we only scored 1 goal despite having so many chances.
I used to say this in the Netherlands, and maybe I’ve mentioned it here too: in big football games—Manchester United vs Liverpool is obviously a top clash with high-level players—if a team is weak in set pieces, it’s almost impossible to win. Today, we conceded another goal from a set piece, which directly led to the loss.
Q: Should Mbemo’s opening goal have stood when Mac Allister was down with a head injury?Slot: I think what I, and the whole team, should do most now is not complain or blame others. After Mac Allister went down, we could have handled the situation better—there’s definitely room for improvement.
Players’ health is important, of course. If a player needs four stitches, everyone should know he needs immediate treatment, but that wasn’t the case then. Still, I want to stress: we could have done better, so this isn’t the reason we lost today. The real reason is that we wasted too many chances that could have won us the game.
And I’ve said this here many times—I hope not just you, but everyone, understands this clearly: our team never does what some teams in football do—feign head injuries to halt opponents' counterattacks.
We never do that; we’ve always been a fair-play team. So when our players actually go down, I hope people realize, “These are Liverpool players—they won’t feign injury; the game should be stopped.” But again, this can’t be an excuse for us conceding or losing.
Q: This is Liverpool’s first four-game losing streak in 11 years. Are you worried about the team’s confidence? Is this the biggest challenge of your coaching career?Slot: As a coach, you face challenges all the time. When you first take office, you adapt to the new role and lead the team to win; when results are good, you join a bigger club and face scrutiny; when you’re a “successor,” people say that’s the biggest challenge; now, with four straight losses, this is also a challenge.
A football coach’s career is about meeting challenges constantly: when winning, you want to keep the streak going; when losing, you want to win again. As for whether the team has lost confidence, I see no signs of it—because in every losing game, we created plenty of chances in the second half.
Looking back at these three Premier League losses, if you put the highlights together, it’s hard to believe we lost. As long as we keep performing like this and improve on some details, we have every reason to win again.
But I can’t guarantee we’ll create 8 to 9 clear-cut chances again on Wednesday night like we did today. I hope we will, but whether we score more goals in the end depends on the players’ performance.
Also, there’s one point no one asked about, but I want to mention it: besides those two conceded goals, we might have given them two or three more chances. This is a dilemma we’ve faced—once we’re 0-1 down, we have to take more risks. But what’s positive is that even so, we still greatly limited their attacking opportunities.
For example, in the 55th minute, there were 6 to 7 attacking players on the pitch. This might explain why our set-piece defense wasn’t as solid as usual in the games against Crystal Palace and today—usually we have 4 to 6 more defensive-minded players, but then there were 7 to 8 attacking players.
But this can’t be an excuse; we should have done better. However, conceding from set pieces in such a situation might not be a coincidence either.
