The boss spoke about Liverpool’s win and looked forward to the rest of a big week in the campaign.
Liverpool continued their march towards the home stretch of this campaign, which I usually peg as beginning after the March international break. With their win at Southampton, the Reds have only two more matches before we enter the final frame of this season.
It was always important to nab this win, given that it continues Liverpool’s positioning as holding their destiny in the chase for the Premier League title firmly in their hands. It also helps, I imagine, in terms of being able to pivot focus entirely on the remaining fixtures which represent the two other competitions where the Reds continue to hold hopes in terms of bringing home silverware: the Champions League and the Carabao Cup.
It wasn’t exactly an easy day out, though, with Liverpool coming out flat in the first half and falling behind due to an error at the back. The kind of circumstance that we’ve experienced often enough as fans that it made us annoyed, but thankfully the team once more found itself and turned the result around.
Head coach Arne Slot spent the match again in one of the box seats as her served the final match in his touchline ban for speaking truth to Michael Oliver following the Merseyside Derby. Following the match, he offered his thoughts to the press on how the day went.
“I didn’t give them compliments at half-time, I can tell you. Maybe it was because I was sitting up there instead of being at the line because I know from experience, not that I’ve been suspended before, that when you watch a game over there, you always feel like, ‘Maybe I can even play in this game.’ But if you are then at the line it’s always more tempo. But I don’t think I was wrong this time if I said at half-time that energy levels were far, far, far too low. That is what had to change and that’s why we made three substitutions just to, apart from bringing in quality, also create something.”
Slot was also asked directly about Darwin Nuñez’s contributions and on whether he considered substituting the striker after picking up a yellow card late in the first half.
“In the end I took him off because he was on [a] yellow but I always hate the idea, if we need to score goals, to take someone off that can score a goal. That’s why it wasn’t in my mind to take him off because I was already planning on after these three if we don’t score a goal then [Diogo] Jota needs to come in and we have to go even more offensive. With Cody [Gakpo] being out, it isn’t like we have that many attacking options left, so that’s why I took a certain risk of keeping him [on]…That’s also the life of a No.9 – you go from missing a chance to scoring an important goal to then, all of a sudden, missing a chance again. But I think today, especially in the second half, you also saw the work-rate he can bring to the team. But the main thing that happened was in the second half we started to play in a different tempo – not only without the ball but also with the ball.”
Slot offered up a lot of thoughts worth reviewing, but it’s pretty clear that the bottom-line was he felt the squad hadn’t been moving with energy and urgency in the first half. After bringing on Alexis Mac Allister, Harvey Elliott, and Andy Robertson, the change in tempo and energy was palpable.
The Reds will look to take that energy – and hopefully some rested legs given a few folks did not play beyond the first half – into their Tuesday night matchup against Paris Saint Germain and to finally wrap their hands around a trophy by beating Newcastle in the Carabao Cup final at Wembley.
Big matches but an international break looms, and with it the opportunity to breathe and recuperate before the tail-end of the season finally begins.