Slot Provides No Excuses and Pledges to Plot Route From Malaise
Liverpool's head coach stated he needed to “examine my own performance” following Liverpool endured a sixth defeat in 7 English top-flight games at home against Forest and affirmed he would discover a solution from the champions’ slump.
Forest, fighting against the drop before kick off, delivered the biggest win at Liverpool's stadium in their history as the Merseyside club slipped to an eighth defeat in eleven matches in every tournament. The most expensive domestic acquisition, the Swedish striker, was again anonymous and the home side argued Murillo’s opener should have been disallowed for comparable grounds to Virgil van Dijk’s disallowed effort against Manchester City prior to the national team pause. But Slot admitted the buck stopped with him and made no excuses.
“Nobody wants to listen to me now speaking about officiating calls if you are defeated 3-0 at home to Forest,” said the Reds' boss. “I should look at my own role initially and my squad, but it does show you how a score can change the flow of a game. Earlier I was just hoping for us to score a strike. Afterwards we barely created anything.
“Of course there is a way out, particularly with the quality footballers we have. No matter if you triumph or lose when you look back you are always considering: ‘Where can we improve, where can we make changes?’ but that is different from questioning your abilities.
“I wish to emphasise I am responsible for the present losses. You are answerable when you are victorious but also responsible when you are defeated. I can not come up with enough reasons for us to have the results we have. That is far from good enough and I am responsible for that.”
Liverpool’s display fell apart as the coach introduced multiple attacking substitutions when chasing the match. “It was the identical on the road at Nottingham Forest the previous campaign,” he said. “I substituted Ibou [Ibrahima Konaté] off and put on [Diogo] Jota and he scored immediately to make it 1-1. At that time it was brave, now it’s likely stupid.”
Liverpool previously were defeated in two successive at Anfield league fixtures against Forest in 1963. The most recent occasion they suffered back-to-back top-flight matches by a 3-0 margin was in 1965.
Slot said: “It was very bad. Competing on home soil, losing 3-0 no matter which opponent you encounter is a very, very bad outcome. Surprising if you consider the opening 30 minutes of the match. I haven’t seen us producing so many chances in the opening 30 minutes maybe the whole season, and the initial occasion they arrived in our box they scored.
“It wasn’t at City, but in all other game we have been the controlling team and were capable to generate chances. Recently it is almost consistently that we miss our opportunities and the attempts we concede find the net.”