Another disappointing away match for Liverpool men on Sunday afternoon saw another loss added to the table, this time against old foes Manchester City. City ran riot over the Reds in the pouring rain at the Etihad,
and showed Liverpool that though we were lucky earlier in the week, there is still a lot to work on if we want to have anything resembling a successful season.
Head coach Arne Slot was similarly direct in his post-match presser, admitting that the hosts were the better side in the first half. It is not all doom and gloom though, as the scoreline did much to flatter City but didn’t reflect the tenacity that Liverpool did end up playing with in the second half to try and pull something out.
“They were, in every aspect of football, better [than us in] the first half,” Slot began.
“I would say like last season; I saw a lot of similarities between last season and this season with one main difference in that after we struggled in the first 25 minutes a lot we scored a set-piece. That changed the game. They kept on outplaying us for 90 minutes but it did help us to get some energy to keep defending well.
“Last season, they didn’t create that many chances. I think today they created more, but it wasn’t that they had chance after chance after chance, but this time they were much more effective with the chances they had. First goal, I don’t think it’s a big chance, I think it’s also quality. Third goal, it’s not a big chance but it is quality. Second goal, set-piece.”
Even as the squad were 2-0 down at halftime, Liverpool very nearly pulled a goal back in the second half through Virgil van Dijk’s header, but it was cruelly ruled offside for Andy Robertson impeding the view of Donnarumma. That call rattled us a little bit and though we kept going for some kind of a goal, it wasn’t to be. 2-1 would’ve been a bit better to handle, but that wasn’t how it ended up.
“I would like to emphasise the fact that being 2-0 down at half-time was a fair reflection of how the game went,” the coach continued.
“But I have been on the opposite side, that my team was much better than the other team, we were 1-0 up and then maybe not scoring the second one and the other team gets a set-piece, it’s 1-1 and then all of a sudden things change.
“So, this can happen in football. It’s not to say for me it was clear and obvious for me that it was the wrong decision that this goal was not allowed, but I will not say that because of that we’ve lost the game because after 1-1, if City just kept on playing like they did then we would have struggled in the second half as well.
“But, I constantly felt if we were managing to keep maybe 1-0 down until half-time, we can maybe adjust a few things, which was definitely necessary because we were constantly coming one or two players short in the midfield because Doku and [Nico] O’Reilly gave us a lot of problems with the two of them. Then 1-1 would have been the biggest gift we could get at half-time because, in my opinion, the second half was a different game, but being 2-0 down and later 3-0 down that maybe doesn’t give a good reflection of how things would have went if it would have been 1-1.”
It was pretty clear throughout the match that Manchester City’s focus on pressing and breaking down play in the middle of the park was more effective than whatever Slot and the lads were trying to do. Even with the success of giving Florian Wirtz space to work earlier in the week, that was not something Liverpool were able to achieve against this City side. We keep losing duels and second balls, even as we go 1v1 and 2v1 against players, and for a coach so focused on possession and ball carrying, it’s worrying. Finally, it appeared that Slot admitted to the game plans not working, despite their success in teams like Villa and Real Madrid.
“It’s easy for players to win their duels if the game plan and the tactics are working and I think that’s what it did against Villa and what it did against Madrid,” Slot explained.
“But we struggled now a lot with them bringing so many players into the centre of the pitch and it was difficult then for some of our players to make the right decisions. So I think it wasn’t about my players not wanting to make the duel, they had to run a lot because they [City] were so much better on the ball than us [and] they were a few times then too late.
“I would first and foremost then always look to the game plan of us and them and not blame my players at all because in the second half when we were doing better I think you could also see that they were able to win much more duels, and then we were more than a few times able to win the ball – which did not result in a goal from us, but in that period of time in the second half I think we definitely deserved a goal.”
We’ve now suffered five league defeats, more than the entirety of last season, and sit 8th in the table. It’s not a fun reality to witness, and though it is still November, thoughts inevitably turn towards the title race, which is appearing a steeper and steeper hill to climb. The latter half of this month and going into December will be relentless, with very little time to even train, so whatever needs to be worked out should be done quickly.
“Yes, it feels too many and the last thing I should speak about now is the title race. We should first focus on getting results – result after result after result – before we can even think about that and the reality is that we are eighth now,” the Dutchman added.
“One team is quite far ahead, although City are four points away from Arsenal. The rest is quite close and I said last season many times, even when we were leading in the beginning, the best way to judge the league table is of course after 38 [games] but the next best thing is to judge it after 19 games because then you’ve all faced the same opponents. And our first focus should be on getting results and the last thing we should focus on is the title race, which is something we could do last season but also not the previous two seasons before. But we need to improve and that’s obvious.”
Hopefully the international break will once again give their heads a break and find what helped them stay consistent last season – even if half of those players are no longer with us. This transition period is just getting harder and harder to sit through.
