Sunday stands as another hard test for this Liverpool men’s team, as they travel down to the Etihad Stadium to face old-ish foes Manchester City. We’re riding high after defeating two similarly difficult
teams like an in-form Aston Villa and historic pain in our backside Real Madrid, so hopefully the confidence can carry through on Sunday, but coach Arne Slot was a little more realistic in his press conference on Friday ahead of the match.
“City is of course a game on itself, you could say. Playing there away from home is probably one of the most difficult challenges you have throughout the season, although I constantly keep saying how difficult it is to play Brentford away or [Crystal] Palace away,” Slot started.
“Every away game is difficult – every home game as well, but an away game even more and that is what I think City have felt this season because I think they have lost two away games. I think we have lost three away games. The only exception to that is Arsenal maybe lost one away game against us but they have been the exception this season. The rest have probably done similar things.
“So, a very interesting game to look forward to because when I wasn’t working here and when I was in Holland I did know when City v Liverpool was or when Liverpool v City was, and I could tell you I was 100 per cent sure in front of my television when this game was there. Similar to the Clasico, by the way, but these are the few games everyone is looking forward to and if you are not part of it, you are looking forward to it as well.”
As we enter the busy end of the year period for the season, all focus turns towards maintaining the level of success that we have found in the last two games. Winning is the only way that we will be able to retain our title come May and though it is still a long way away, we need to find our consistency again to achieve what we want. Arne was sure to outline the way to do that, and that continues with facing City.
“I only focus on ourselves and our main focus is on consistency at the moment,” the coach continued.
“We’ve lost a few games, much more than we usually do, and now we’ve won two so our focus is on getting consistent and improving, improving, getting players fit and then we will see where that will lead to. But at this moment of time it’s [the league table] definitely not the only focus we have.”
It is easy and almost expected that this season will be a challenge, even before the tragedies that have befallen the squad, but there is still joy to be found. Those two victories in the past week are nothing to scoff at and show that we are still capable of playing well and winning games. It also helps that both teams played in a manner that we could anticipate, but the reminder that yes we are still a good team will surely help as we move forward through the season.
“For me, but again I say mainly the same, we’ve reached that level of performance in other games as well, when the playing style of the opponent was compared to that,” Slot explained.
“But we always knew that we were able to do so – I’ve showed them many times, when playing styles were similar, that we could do the same as we did against Madrid, so it wasn’t a surprise to me how both games went. It was helpful for us that the other team did what we expected them to do because in eight out of the 10 games I think we’ve played this season we faced a different playing style than all the games these teams played before. But Villa and Madrid did what we could expect and I think that’s always helpful.
“Then there is still a lot of work to be done by the players to get a performance like that, but it is helpful. Where I think we can expect from City is the playing style we always see, but the difficult thing in that is that they are very good at it and have very good players so that makes that challenge big again. But as I said every Premier League game and every Champions League game is a challenge.”
Thankfully, we’re looking more and more ready for the challenge than we were through the whole of October.
Liverpool play Manchester City on Sunday, November 9, at 4:30pm BST/11:30am EST.
