Sunday’s match against Burnley very nearly ended in a 0-0 draw if it hadn’t been for the last gasp penalty awarded to Liverpool, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it was a bad match. Sure, it wasn’t exactly a fun watch, but we got through it, didn’t we?
Arne Slot gave his opinion on the hard fought victory in his post-match press conference, and also touched on why Milos Kerkez came off early, and Alexander Isak didn’t even make the bench. And in his usual Dutch way, shared things with his own brand
of candor.
“I know how hard it is to create chances against a team that’s with 11 players in their 18-yard box. It’s by the way very good that they do this because they’ve almost got a point so I’m not saying anything negative about it, I’m just trying to explain how difficult it is against a Premier League team because they are very good players as well,” Slot began.
“If they defend with all of them back and they hardly try to bring the ball out from the back because the goalkeeper every time plays long, and we don’t score from a set-piece, then the only thing you can score from is open play – and open play is quite difficult if you have to outplay 11 players in their own 18-yard box.
“That’s what we saw today – you come close, close, close but every time there is a foot in between or whatever. [There were] no really open chances, so a draw was probably what we expected throughout the game but we tried also with the substitutions we made to bring all the players we have that can attack on the pitch. I think we were six or seven in the end. I don’t know if that has anything to do with us scoring the goal but we did create the penalty and just before that [had] a big chance from Jeremie [Frimpong]. So, relief. Lucky.“
Indeed, after the string of bad luck suffered in the match with missed shot after missed shot after missed shot, it felt like a karmic reward to get that penalty in the end. Even with a surprising first half substitution as Slot took off Milos Kerkez, putting on Andy Robertson in his place, after the former got a yellow card and appeared to be going in a little hard to the Burnley players. Slot is no stranger to early changes if they’re needed (we all remember how last season started, right?) and elaborated on the decision easily.
“Not only the yellow card but also that afterwards [Kerkez] played the ball, no foul at all, but the referee blew his whistle, which can always happen because this happens in football. But the reaction of the fans and I also saw players of them also trying to go to the referee [saying], ‘If you think this is a foul, maybe you should give a yellow for it.’ Which would have been ridiculous of course, but then it is a risk,” the coach explained.
“The only way we could lose this game is if we are down to 10 because with 11 v 11 we could have drawn it, but we could never have lost it because they have never been… in our 18-yard box. So, then the only way you can lose it is if we go down to 10 and I didn’t want to take that risk, which was hard for Milos because normally you don’t have to take a player off if he has a yellow before, but I felt this was the best choice to make.”
The real challenge was trying to score throughout the regulation 90, as Burnley executed their plan well to keep us from doing just that. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t as if Liverpool didn’t try, but even with changes like Conor Bradley and Jeremie Frimpong coming on, and Dominik Szoboszlai moving back into midfield, it didn’t happen. It was the stroke of luck that was a handball in the box that led to Liverpool finally taking the lead in the last minute of the match, even as it looked potentially like Slot would take talismanic Mohamed Salah off.
“If you need a goal and things are not going really well – although in the second half I felt we were better and better and better and we came closer and closer and closer – but I thought about almost every substitution,” Slot continued.
“But in the end you always come back to, ‘I don’t want to leave this stadium with a draw thinking I didn’t bring all my attackers in, all the guys that can score a goal.’ In another game you maybe wonder is it worth the risk to play with seven attackers, but against a team that plays with 11 players in their own 18-yard box that’s not, I think, a big risk then and that’s why we decided to do that. And taking Mo off – if you need a goal, it will probably happen this season or maybe next season, but it probably won’t happen a lot.”
Speaking of attackers, it was made pretty clear leading up to this match that new signing Alexander Isak would be unlikely to make an appearance. That didn’t stop people from hoping for it, especially as Liverpool started desperately searching for a goal (despite Isak not even being on the bench). For all the money we paid for the Swede, though, means expectations are a bit higher than usual.
“So, I can explain to you – it will take a few minutes but is not that difficult to understand. So, if you start the season when the players who have been off for three or four or five weeks, you give them a certain base,” the Dutchman said.
“No, he did recovery but he had a hard and tough session yesterday. You give them a lot of good sessions before they are able in the end of the week to play 45 minutes. We got him from Newcastle in a state where you could say his pre-season is going to start now, so then he needs proper minutes of training before he has a certain base, let alone for him to play twice in three days.
“So, that’s what we do, what we try to prepare players for in the beginning of the season is [to play] once a week and then we try to do more and more and more for a minimum of two games a week so they are ready for that schedule.
“Now, Alex is far from ready for that schedule of three games in a week, 90 minutes. But then we could use him today for five minutes and then Wednesday again 10, and then 15, but we don’t believe that is the way to build him up. We believe it’s the way… Sweden did the right thing of giving him good sessions without playing him a lot because if you play the player you cannot give him good sessions. They did the right thing [and] we did the same, so now he will be able either Wednesday or Saturday to play 45 as a minimum, and maybe a little bit more.
“But if he plays 45 on Wednesday don’t expect him to play 45 or more on Saturday because his body is not prepared for that, in our opinion.”
Liverpool look ahead now to their first Champions League match on Wednesday when Atletico Madrid come to Anfield, and hopefully we can get through their own blocking tactics to have a more fun match.
