Arne Slot faced the press ahead of Liverpool’s Saturday night match against in-form Aston Villa, and addressed the importance of confidence for his team:
“It gets more and more important in every Premier
League game, let alone in games of ours. It’s never helpful if you end a game of football against [Manchester] United with conceding a set-piece and you start another one [at Brentford] in the Premier League and you concede after five minutes from a throw-in, from a set-piece.
“I’m not 100 per cent sure if I’m correct, we had to defend 16 set-pieces and 15 we defended well. But we are in this moment of time where 15 isn’t enough because we conceded 16. The first one, someone said to me – who worked in a completely different department – that no plan survives the first contact and that is also a little bit what makes it difficult if you are five minutes in the game and you are 1-0 down – that’s never helpful for confidence for the plan you are having.
“If I liked a little part of the game, it was the part after we conceded the 1-0, because at that moment of time we were creative, we created our chances but we couldn’t score. And then in the last 10 minutes it became more of their game again and eventually the way we conceded the 2-0, that is something that is far from our standards.”
He also discussed the challenges of injuries during this campaign thus far, using Alexander Isak as a prime example:
“Just handling the situation as it is [is all we can do]. Let me use Alex [Isak] as an example, he had to do his pre-season inside the season and people can then argue, ‘Why do you play him?’ But if I don’t play him, I don’t have him available and we need to have him available, because otherwise I have to play Hugo [Ekitiké] every single game.
“And I was just with Owen Hargreaves when he made the comparison between the two of them and he showed that one played 34 games last season, the other one 34 – and we play 60 over here. So, that’s why I need to get Alex as soon as I can into playing as many games as he can.
“That has been something not only with him but with a few others as well. Jeremie Frimpong has been in and out with injuries quite a few times, same with Conor Bradley. So if one is out, the other one has to play more – that’s why I’ve played Dominik Szoboszlai a few times in that position.
“That has been something what every team, by the way, has, so it’s again not an excuse for us because every team works with this. But what was a bit different, for example, for me [to] last season is that last season they all had one year [of] Premier League experience as a minimum and they were fit when we started and they stayed fit.
“And now, they weren’t all fit from the start and some players have to play maybe even more than you want them to do, which is a risk for them getting injured as well. But it’s just the situation as it is and we have still more than enough good players available to play the game on Saturday, to play the game on Tuesday and to play the game on Sunday. But I have to take care of a few of them and that’s why I made the decision not to play seven or eight players two days ago.”
Slot does hope to stick with his current approach to find form and results, though notes that he has changed approach previously to face specific opponents:
“It does go against my beliefs [to change], but I’ve won games in the past [like this]. We were talking about [Manchester] City away, that maybe went against my beliefs [last season] but it was necessary to play it like that over there in the second half. So, I would be more than open to adapt in certain situations, but I don’t think the story is – at least in my opinion – we concede chance after chance after chance, or that we are too open. It is absolutely not like this.
“Every single game, maybe apart from Palace because in the first half we could have been two or three-nil down and maybe the Brentford game, in all the other games we deserved much more than we got. We hardly conceded a chance, even this week with the team I put out, which played together for the first time – I think they only conceded three big chances, unfortunately all three went in. That’s because they weren’t chances, they were big chances. I don’t see us conceding a lot of chances, so I don’t see a reason to change our playing style completely, but we need to do better in not conceding goals, that is for sure.”
Though he has admittedly faced challenges during this period, he doesn’t feel he’s learned much from them as yet:
“Maybe learning comes a little bit later because now you are mainly focused on, ‘How can I change?’ And you always evaluate the decisions you’ve made and the choices you’ve made or the things you’ve done afterwards. My focus is now not so much on trying to look back on what has happened but more on, ‘How can we get a very good performance on Saturday?’ So yeah, maybe the learning part is going to come a little bit later. But now the focus is on the future and is on, ‘How can we get a good result or at least a good performance against Villa?’ Because normally a good performance from these quality players leads to a good result.
