Arne Slot has delivered a clear warning about Liverpool\u2019s standing in the Premier League this season, arguing the club\u2019s set-piece record is a growing handicap. Two days after a Virgil van Dijk header from a corner secured all three points against Sunderland, Slot said the weight of set pieces on results can no longer be overlooked.<\/p>\n
\u201cI cannot stop talking about the importance of set pieces. It\u2019s every single day,\u201d the Duthman said. Slot pointed to a stark contrast between European and domestic form when it comes to dead-ball situations. \u201cYou asked me in the past what the difference is between our performances in the Champions League and Premier League and the most simple answer is set pieces. In the Champions League , we are top in set pieces and in the Premier League we are completely bottom.\u201d<\/p>\n
Liverpool\u2019s set-piece balance has improved from -9 at the end of December to -6 after recent goals. Van Dijk\u2019s header against Sunderland, his header against Bournemouth and Dominik Szoboszlai\u2019s free kick against Manchester City helped reduce the negative margin without further concessions.<\/p>\n
Slot did not downplay the scale of the problem. \u201cThe current Premier League is so, so, so much more about set pieces than it was last season,\u201d he said. \u201cEven though I already found it very important, it has now gone through the roof in terms of how important it is.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s actually impossible to win the league if you have a set-piece balance like ours. You have to have plus five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, no matter what you do in open play, to have a chance to win the league.\u201d<\/p>\n
The comments come with Liverpool sitting with a -6 set-piece balance and sixth in the Premier League table in the provided standings. Slot\u2019s assessment frames set pieces as a decisive margin in a season where small differences are proving decisive at the top of the domestic table.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Slot warns Liverpool\u2019s set-piece deficit is a league-deciding weakness despite recent improvements .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6847,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,172],"tags":[1162,299,1047],"class_list":["post-6848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-epl","tag-analytics","tag-arne-slot","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6848","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=6848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}