The Liverpool manager felt the match between Liverpool and Brighton was an entertaining affair that was spoiled for the Reds by a late goal from the hosts.
Liverpool continued their month long tour of dead rubber matches with a rare Monday evening kickoff away to Brighton. The match was wide open and entertaining as both sides threw punches and counter punches, leading to goals aplenty. Liverpool scored early through Harvey Elliott, and then retook the lead just before halftime thanks to a sublime strike from Dominik Szoboszlai. Two goals from the hosts, including an 85th minute strike from Jack Hinshelwood gave Brighton the lead and all three points.
After the match, Liverpool manager Arne Slot lauded both sides for playing a match that anyone would enjoy watching. With the Reds having no stakes, and having gone on holiday earlier in the week, Slot was happy to talk about the vibes of the match and not get hung up on the result.
A great game of football. Two teams that wanted to play, two teams that wanted to win, had no intentions to do things that people normally don’t like to see if they watch a game of football, so no time-wasting, no tumbling. Two teams that were just for almost 100 minutes trying to win a game of football and with some brilliant individual moments. I’ve seen a few from us but the lead-up to the 2-2, the ball from the goalkeeper towards that midfielder that pretended to play the ball to the outside and then played [to] his midfielder was a great moment from them, and then the lead-up to the 3-2, the way Mitoma bounced that ball behind his standing leg towards the midfielder that came underneath him. [They] were from their perspective great moments, and I think there were many of those moments during the whole game from both sides. So, [a] joy to watch, unfortunately not with the result we wanted.
Slot handed his sole signing from last summer, Frederico Chiesa, his first Premier League start against Brighton. The gaffer was happy to throw some praise the way of the Italian, stressing how difficult it is to be sharp after not really playing all season.
I think the biggest quality Federico has is scoring goals. So the more you get him in and around the box, the bigger chance it is for him to score a goal. He got a good chance just before Mo [Salah] had his big chance. Mo assisted to Federico and for him to have an open shot from the 18-yard box is for Federico a very good chance because he’s such a great finisher. But [it was] well defended by [Jan Paul] van Hecke, who blocked that ball. I think he did even more than I could expect from him. Because if you haven’t played throughout the whole season, hardly ever had any starts, and then to play Brighton away – which is a very good team, No.8 of the league that can bring in Mitoma 20 minutes before the end, that tells you everything about this league – and then for him to be out for so long and play a game like this is more than I could expect from him.
Like Chiesa, Mohamed Salah also failed to find the back of the net despite some big chances. Slot was surprised the Egyptian did not bury one of his attempts, but has little doubt Mo will be among the goals when it matters.
The first thought that goes through my head when I see a ball moving towards Mo, I am like, ‘It’s a quite big chance, this could lead to a goal’ because that’s what Mo normally does. He has been throughout this season almost un-human, but there were moments in the season where he was human. So, it’s not the first time that he is not scoring for one or two games in a row, but the good thing for us is that this hardly ever happens and if it happens you can be sure he will score in either the third or fourth game again.
While Chiesa and Salah struggled to finish of some choice chances, Dominik Szoboszlai lofted a perfect shot over the head of the goalkeeper after a quick 1-2 with Harvey Elliott from a set piece. Slot said this was not a specific set piece they have trained, but something they look for when setting up.
What I liked a lot is that we mostly have a certain routine in our set-pieces but we tried to tell them if you see something else, try to execute it. Feel free to execute if you feel there is another opportunity. I think Harvey and Dom felt it was a two-v-one at that free-kick and they outplayed that. Then, I definitely feel Dom meant to shoot that ball on target because he has a great shot and we ask him, ‘Use it more, use it more, use it more’ because in training sessions he scores from every angle. But if he is playing he is always looking where is Mo, which is not always a bad idea because Mo can score a goal as well. I don’t know how many goals he has now, but it is getting better and better for an attacking midfielder for Liverpool to have this amount of goals.