Arne Slot has been clear that Liverpool will not treat the tragic death of Diogo Jota as a justification for their uneven start to the 2025\u201326 season. The campaign began strongly, with seven consecutive wins across the Premier League, Champions League and Carabao Cup, but a run of four straight defeats extended to six losses in seven matches.<\/p>\n
Last time out Liverpool were comprehensively beaten 3\u20130 by Manchester City, leaving the Reds already eight points off the pace at the top of the table and their title defence in tatters. A number of issues have been identified, including a lack of defensive depth and the struggles of new signings to settle and adapt.<\/p>\n
Slot acknowledged the emotional toll on the squad while insisting the club would not lean on that loss as a rationale for results. \u201cWe are always judged, sometimes fair, sometimes not fair. But I saw the interview live and I know that it is an issue for us, which is completely normal,\u201d Slot said on Friday.<\/p>\n
He went on to underline the human side of the situation. \u201cAt this moment in time, I always think how must it feel for his wife and his children? Because it is so, so, so much harder for them than it is for us. But that we will miss the player and the person is completely clear. Now, we play Nottingham Forest, last season there we were 1-0 down and it only took him [Jota] one minute to score the equaliser.\u201d<\/p>\n
Slot accepted the difficulty of quantifying the effect on performance. He described it as \u201cimpossible to measure what it does to the players and to our results\u201d to now be without Jota. \u201cThe last thing I would do is use it as an excuse,\u201d he added. \u201cWhat I do know is that we miss the player, that is 100% sure, and we miss the person, but I cannot measure the impact that has on our results. That is impossible for me to say, and we will never use it as an excuse.\u201d<\/p>\n
Andrew Robertson paid an emotional tribute to Jota in the wake of Scotland qualifying for the World Cup this week, saying that playing at the tournament was something they had often spoken about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Slot: Liverpool will not use Diogo Jota’s death as an excuse amid early-season collapse this season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4612,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,172],"tags":[220,299],"class_list":["post-4613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-epl","tag-andy-robertson","tag-arne-slot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4613","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=4613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}