Liverpool manager Arne Slot admitted the 3\u20132 defeat to Manchester United on Sunday exposed the two dominant strands of his team\u2019s season: contentious refereeing decisions and a handful of “stupid” mistakes from his players. He challenged one pivotal decision but also accepted his side\u2019s sloppy play gave the moment its opportunity.<\/p>\n
“If it was a touch, which I think it is, because if you know a bit about ball sports, you know that if a ball has a certain curve and the curve changes, there must have been a contact,” Slot said. He added: “But if it\u2019s light then we should have a debate in football about whether that\u2019s enough to disallow a goal. But the rule is if there was a touch then it should have been disallowed.”<\/p>\n
Slot insisted the pattern of contentious decisions has been a recurring theme this season. “I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a surprise to anyone this season that if there\u2019s a VAR intervention or if there\u2019s something that could be left or could be right then the decision goes against us. That has been the whole season every single time this season. I remember Paris Saint-Germain at home , getting a penalty for a soft touch on [Alexis] Mac Allister but of course the VAR intervenes and says, \u2018No, no, no, this is not a penalty.\u2019 Then one week later when I see Paris Saint-Germain play against Bayern Munich and get that same soft touch but the penalty stays.”<\/p>\n
He contrasted incidents in which play was not stopped for injury with others where it was, and stressed self-examination. “We have to first look at ourselves, that is completely clear and obvious, but that decisions have gone every single game against us, that\u2019s also completely clear and obvious.”<\/p>\n
Slot noted moments of poor concentration and a turnover that led to the second goal: “we lost the ball in a stupid position and we lost a few big moments afterwards in duels.” The club appears settled on his future: his position is understood to be safe and Liverpool are keeping last season\u2019s title in view. With Champions League qualification largely secure \u2014 six points clear with three games left \u2014 Slot must now map out how to correct the recurring faults exposed this campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Slot blamed refereeing decisions and “stupid” mistakes as the defining themes of Liverpool’s season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13617,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,172],"tags":[1505,1023,299],"class_list":["post-13618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-epl","tag-accountability","tag-alexis-mac-allister","tag-arne-slot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}