Arne Slot says club decision makers share his assessment of Liverpool\u2019s damaging run of results. The manager, who had a seamless start last season, has watched that early momentum unravel and publicly voiced frustration about opposition styles, refereeing and the squad\u2019s lack of depth.<\/p>\n
Slot later stepped back from his comments on squad depth and refocused on recurring weaknesses: vulnerability to long balls, set pieces and a heavily altered starting XI. With speculation about his future circulating, he was asked how the board had reacted to what the club has called a 72-year slump. \u201cThey say similar things,\u201d he insisted.<\/p>\n
\u201cI speak mainly to Richard [Hughes, sporting director] and once in a while to the others. They also see similar things as what I see. For me the conversations haven\u2019t changed a lot. We always talk about the game and it\u2019s always nicer to talk about the game if you have won than if you have lost.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Liverpool prepared to host an in-form Aston Villa on Saturday, Slot admitted the team showed frayed edges. \u201cI can come up with five or six reasons why we are not winning as much or losing as much as we do but, as I say every time, there are never enough excuses to have a run of form as we had now,\u201d he huffed.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo matter if I could come up with 200 excuses, when you are Liverpool you cannot lose\u2014for me\u2014five out of six, but the reality is six out of seven.\u201d<\/p>\n
Slot did not give full weight to the recent defeat to Palace after a heavily changed lineup. The manager\u2019s stance drew an uncomfortable comparison to Erik ten Hag\u2019s refusal to accept a defeat to Tottenham Hotspur on the basis of a red card for Bruno Fernandes; Ten Hag was sacked three days after making that claim.<\/p>\n
Ahead of the weekend fixtures, Opta data showed Liverpool had faced 19 ‘big chances’ from open play this season, a tally only newly promoted Burnley (21) exceeded, according to The Guardian. By comparison, Arsenal had faced two. Slot defended his approach: \u201cI don\u2019t see us conceding a lot of chances so I don\u2019t see a reason to change our playing style completely,\u201d he shrugged, \u201cbut we need to do better in not conceding goals.<\/p>\n
\u201cAgainst [Manchester] United, how many chances did we concede? Against [Eintracht] Frankfurt when we were 3\u20131 up, we hardly conceded a shot on target. In all the games we played until now we haven\u2019t conceded a lot of chances. Not at all. We do give away a bit more than last season but that has to do with us being 1\u20130 down so you take a bit more risk. ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arne Slot says Liverpool board shares his view on the club’s 72-year slump and current problems. now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4190,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,172],"tags":[1162,299,1100],"class_list":["post-4191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-epl","tag-analytics","tag-arne-slot","tag-defence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4191","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=4191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}