Liverpool's Manager Provides No Excuses and Vows to Find Way Out of Malaise

Arne Slot declared he needed to “examine my own performance” after the Reds suffered a 6th loss in seven English top-flight games at home to Forest and insisted he would discover a way from the champions’ slump.

Nottingham Forest, fighting against the drop before kick off, produced the largest victory at Liverpool's stadium in their history as Liverpool fell to an 8th defeat in 11 matches in all competitions. The British record signing, the Swedish striker, was again unnoticeable and Liverpool argued the defender's first goal should have been ruled out for similar reasons to Virgil van Dijk’s disallowed effort against City before the international break. But Slot admitted the responsibility rested with him and made no excuses.

“No one wishes to listen to me now talking about refereeing decisions if you are defeated 3-0 in your own stadium to Nottingham Forest,” said the Liverpool head coach. “I ought to examine myself first and my squad, but it demonstrates you how a goal can alter the momentum of a match. Before I was just waiting for us to score a strike. Later we barely created any chances.

“Naturally there is a path forward, particularly with the quality footballers we have. Regardless if you triumph or lose when you reflect you are always considering: ‘Where can we improve, in what aspects can we adjust?’ but that is something else from doubting yourself.

“I want to emphasise I am accountable for the current defeats. You are responsible when you are winning but also liable when you are losing. I can never provide sufficient reasons for us to have the outcomes we have. That is not good enough and I am to blame for that.”

Liverpool’s performance fell apart as Slot made multiple attacking changes when pursuing the match. “It was the same away at Forest the previous campaign,” he said. “I substituted Ibou [Ibrahima Konaté] off and put on the Portuguese forward and he scored straight away to equalize at 1-1. At that time it was brave, now it’s probably unwise.”

The Anfield side previously were defeated in two successive at Anfield league fixtures by Nottingham Forest in 1963. The most recent occasion they lost consecutive top-flight games by a three-goal scoreline was in 1965.

Slot said: “It was extremely poor. Competing at home, conceding 3-0 regardless of which opponent you encounter is a very, very bad result. Surprising if you consider the first half-hour of the game. I did not witness us producing so much in the initial half-hour maybe the whole campaign, and the first time they entered in our box they scored.

“It wasn’t at City, but in all other fixture we have been the controlling side and were capable to generate chances. Recently it is almost consistently that we miss our opportunities and the ones we concede go in.”

Aaron Collins
Aaron Collins

Maya Chen is a data scientist and tech writer specializing in AI applications for business analytics and digital transformation.