Read Arne Slot’s reaction to Liverpool’s 3-0 loss to Manchester City at Etihad Stadium.
Giorgi Mamardashvili saved an early Erling Haaland penalty but the City striker opened the scoring with a header before Virgil van Dijk saw an equaliser disallowed for offside against Andy Robertson.
Pep Guardiola’s side then made it 2-0 in first-half stoppage time through a deflected Nico Gonzalez strike and the game was effectively ended as a contest soon after the hour when Jeremy Doku added a third.
Read every word from Slot’s post-match press conference below.
On the result and Liverpool’s performance…
They were, in every aspect of football, better [than us in] the first half. I would say like last season; I saw a lot of similarities between last season and this season with one main difference in that after we struggled in the first 25 minutes a lot we scored a set-piece. That changed the game. They kept on outplaying us for 90 minutes but it did help us to get some energy to keep defending well. Last season, they didn’t create that many chances. I think today they created more, but it wasn’t that they had chance after chance after chance, but this time they were much more effective with the chances they had. First goal, I don’t think it’s a big chance, I think it’s also quality. Third goal, it’s not a big chance but it is quality. Second goal, set-piece.
On the mood in the dressing room after the game…
Of course, everyone is disappointed. It was a very good start to the week, winning against [Aston] Villa and Real Madrid, but if you thought you already faced two strong opponents then Man City comes across, away at the Etihad. That is, for every team, difficult, including for us. They were by far the much better side in the first half.
On the VAR decision to rule out Van Dijk’s header with the scoreline at 1-0…
I would like to emphasise the fact that being 2-0 down at half-time was a fair reflection of how the game went. But I have been on the opposite side, that my team was much better than the other team, we were 1-0 up and then maybe not scoring the second one and the other team gets a set-piece, it’s 1-1 and then all of a sudden things change. So, this can happen in football. It’s not to say for me it was clear and obvious for me that it was the wrong decision that this goal was not allowed, but I will not say because of that we’ve lost the game because after 1-1, if City just kept on playing like they did then we would have struggled in the second half as well.
But, I constantly felt if we were managing to keep maybe 1-0 down until half-time, we can maybe adjust a few things, which was definitely necessary because we were constantly coming one or two players short in the midfield because Doku and [Nico] O’Reilly gave us a lot of problems with the two of them. Then 1-1 would have been the biggest gift we could get at half-time because, in my opinion, the second half was a different game, but being 2-0 down and later 3-0 down that maybe doesn’t given a good reflection of how things would have went if it would have been 1-1.
On Liverpool’s success rate in duels throughout the game…
It’s easy for players to win their duels if the game plan and the tactics are working and I think that’s what it did against Villa and what it did against Madrid. But we struggled now a lot with them bringing so many players into the centre of the pitch and it was difficult then for some of our players to make the right decisions. So I think it wasn’t about my players not wanting to make the duel, they had to run a lot because they [City] were so much better on the ball than us [and] they were a few times then too late.
I would first and foremost then always look to the game plan of us and them and not blame my players at all because in the second half when we were doing better I think you could also see that they were able to win much more duels, and then we were more than a few times able to win the ball – which did not result in a goal from us, but in that period of time in the second half I think we definitely deserved a goal.
On the Reds suffering five league defeats so far this season and his assessment of the title race…
Yes, it feels too many and the last thing I should speak about now is the title race. We should first focus on getting results – result after result after result – before we can even think about that and the reality is that we are eighth now. One team is quite far ahead although City are four points away from Arsenal. The rest is quite close and I said last season many times, even when we were leading in the beginning, the best way to judge the league table is of course after 38 [games] but the next best thing is to judge it after 19 games because then you’ve all faced the same opponents. And our first focus should be on getting results and the last thing we should focus on is the title race, which is something we could do last season but also not the previous two seasons before. But we need to improve and that’s obvious.
