Arne Slot urged patience as Liverpool try to steady a title defence that began poorly but has shown signs of recovery. With misfiring superstars and disappointing results there was even talk of a sacking for Slot just a few weeks ago, although a recent upturn in form saw Liverpool spend Christmas Day in fifth place, level on points with Chelsea above them.<\/p>\n
Slot was frank about the standings but used statistics to explain why he remains optimistic. “We are in the position we deserve after the first half of the season,” he said. “I think we should be higher, let that be clear\u2014I was expecting and hoping for us to be higher in the table\u2014but even in the last six games the difference between us and the other team is constantly too small.<\/p>\n
“Now we have been a few times a bit lucky with the result and we need to find a situation where we are so much better than the other team that luck or bad luck does not influence it any more.<\/p>\n
“I think the games we have lost were unlucky. Referees and set pieces have had an incredible impact on the start of our season, but we should not have that as an excuse. That should not lead to us dropping points. We need to make sure like last season when a lot of decisions went against us as well but it didn\u2019t hurt us.” <\/p>\n
Slot highlighted how the underlying numbers contrast with the league position. “Players are getting fitter and fitter, not only the ones we brought in but also the ones who missed out in pre-season,” he continued. “They are getting used to each other. I think the best is still to come for this team.<\/p>\n
“If you look at what has happened in the first half [of the season] then I am not so surprised where we are. If you look at our set-piece balance, there is not one team in the world that is minus eight in set pieces and is still joint-fourth in the league. If you find that team please tell me.<\/p>\n
“From open play we are the number-one team in the league for chance creation but I don\u2019t think anyone sees it because I think in general we are criticised a lot. That is true if you simply look at the results, but if you were to exclude the set pieces then the world would look completely different and we would probably be five or six points higher.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arne Slot says set-piece misfortune and strong chance creation explain Liverpool’s uneven first half.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5399,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,172],"tags":[1162,299,1215],"class_list":["post-5400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-epl","tag-analytics","tag-arne-slot","tag-controversy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5400","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=5400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}