Read Arne Slot’s injury update on Jeremie Frimpong and Alexander Isak, plus his reaction to Liverpool’s 5-1 win at Eintracht Frankfurt in the Champions League on Wednesday night.
The Reds’ four-game losing run was ended by a dominant display at Deutsche Bank Park and recovery from Rasmus Kristensen’s 26th-minute opener.
Hugo Ekitike returned to his former club to score the leveller before headed goals off corners from Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konate gave the visitors a 3-1 lead at the break.
Cody Gakpo netted the fourth and the evening’s scoring was completed in minute 70 by Dominik Szoboszlai’s long-range hit.
The evening was slightly soured, however, by potential injuries to Frimpong and Isak in the first half.
See what Slot had to say in his post-match press conference with the following summary
from it…
On whether Liverpool offered ‘the perfect response’ to recent form tonight…
Maybe yes, although I saw a lot of similarities in the last few weeks, in the last few games we played. I also saw some differences. The similarities were that we already create a few chances before we conceded the first one and the first chance we conceded was usually a goal. In the end it turned out to be the only chance we conceded today. Why was that? Because we went 3-1 up and so then it’s easier to control the game than when you’re 1-0 down all the time. I’ve said here a few times telling you guys how important set-pieces are, how important the balance at set-pieces is. Now we were able to score two so you go 3-1 up at half-time because you score two set-pieces.
That is a big, big, big difference and you go in at half-time at 1-1 with still the same amount of chances, but people will judge us definitely differently when you don’t score them. The biggest exception for me today compared to the other games we’ve played was the playing style of our opponent. We got some energy out of the moments we could press them, which in the last four or five games we played we were not able to press the opponent because the ball wasn’t on the ground, it was in the air.
On Ekitike’s performance and Isak’s injury…
The first goal we scored was special. You could see his pace in a moment like that. These were also moments we were also hoping for. Like I said before the game, we were able in the last few weeks to create many, many, many chances but unfortunately we were not always able to score them. Today with Alex and Hugo, I brought two players on the pitch who are usually able to score goals. Alex was close a few times but had to go off at half-time and that’s the difficult balance we were having with him.
When he came, he hardly had trained, so you bring him step by step forward and then you feel there must be a moment where he can play twice a week – he did it with Sweden as well. But the first time we tried he had to go off and let’s hope it is not that bad. He had to come off because he felt his groin. Many people told me they wanted me to play him more and we had to find the balance and unfortunately that balance didn’t work out for us today perfectly. Let’s hope for the best. Both of them did what I was hoping for, making runs in behind, making sure they were a big threat and both of them did well.
On his conversation with Szoboszlai in the first half and the midfielder’s performance…
The topic was that my team and myself watch three, four, five, six, seven, eight games of the opponent and not once they have played like this. So, we were expecting a 4-3-3, maybe with a winger and a nine press, we were expecting a 4-4-2, we were even expecting a 5-3-2. But we weren’t expecting 5-2-3 and that’s what they did. The good thing is that it’s quite familiar for us because [Crystal] Palace plays it, [Manchester] United plays it, Burnley played it. I had to adjust a little bit how we wanted to press, so that was one of the conversations. Dominik, again, had a good performance. Since I’m here, he’s one of the players that, maybe after Virgil and Mo [Salah], has played the most minutes for me. That tells you what I think about him.
