Speaking to the press as Liverpool reconvenes following a string of losses, Arne Slot was measured in his verdict. Put most simply, the Reds are not creating enough and are conceding too many — though
the boss did emphasize that the outcome looks a bit worse than the underlying numbers suggest:
“I think what we can say if we compare ourselves to last season, we don’t create as many chances as we did in the start of last season. But we are still the team that from open play creates the most xG chances, most shots on target.
“But we’ve conceded too many goals, that’s for sure, and we’ve conceded nine, where four of them are from set-pieces. That was and still is, by the way, a strength of us, which sounds weird if you concede four, but that’s not a reflection of the chances we’ve conceded in terms of set-pieces. The other five were two fast breaks and three from open play.
“I think in open play we are conceding too many crosses, so that is one of the things what we have to address and what we have to do better. Like Virgil [van Dijk] says, I think he means that teams are facing us differently than the first half of last season – but that is also what I’ve said. The amount of long balls that we are facing now compared to last season, I think we’re already one-third on the way in the amount of long balls we have to defend compared to last season after seven games already.
“So, we have to find answers to that and the first answer is not to concede so many goals. Because if it’s harder to score your goals, the best thing you can do is make it harder for teams to score against you as well.”
Slot is not arguing that everything’s rosy, but he’s not having a meltdown, either: the basics are there, the Reds just need to access them.
There is a challenge in coming from three straight defeats, however, and the Liverpool boss didn’t shy away from this fact:
“I think it should not matter who you are playing on Sunday or Saturday, but we play on Sunday, if you’ve lost three games in a row and you wear the Liverpool shirt. It doesn’t matter who your opponent is, you have to react. If there’s one thing I cannot blame the players [for], they give everything they have every single game. They go all in from the first until the last minute – this is what we did in the last three games as well.
“In all three games we had to come back from being 1-0 down and in two games we managed to do so, but unfortunately lost in the end where we were having chances in both games maybe more than our opponent to win it. But if you’ve lost three in a row, it doesn’t matter if Man United is coming or Brentford next week, there should always be a reaction – not only from Mo [Salah] but from all the players.”
Here’s hoping the international break — in which a good number of Liverpool players found some good form — has served as a bit of a reset.
