Slot Speaks: The Boss Gives Honest Assessment Of Liverpool’s Opening Day Victory
Slot discusses his second half changes and his team’s performance.
Well, the first game, the first clean sheet, and the first three points are all in the bag for Arne Slot as he begins his Liverpool tenure. The Reds travelled to Portman Road Stadium to face off against newly promoted Ipswich Town in their opening game and came away with a 2-0 victory.
The first half wasn’t the most convincing display of Slot’s vision for the team, but in the second, the players gained their footing and created more chances. A goal and an assist for Mohamed Salah sealed the win and now they’ll return to the Northwest for their home opener against Brentford.
After the game, Slot gave his impression on the problems in the first half.
“I think we lost far too many duels,” he said.
“They were very aggressive, which led to three yellow cards – but in a good way aggressive – and we didn’t cope with that well enough, in my opinion. That’s what I said to them at half-time, if you want to win here then you need to go a step up in terms of winning your duels first and make a fight out of it, instead of accepting that every time we play a ball long that the ball ends up in our 16 again.”
Those who wondered at Jarell Quansah being removed at the half for Ibrahima Konaté got their answer about that decision. Thankfully, it wasn’t an injury concern for the youngster.
“It helped us as well because Ibou Konate came in because he, from the start, won his duels against the No.9 and that gave us also a lot of ball possession and two goals, but we could have scored a few more, though.”
The coach went on to emphasize the importance of teamwork over individual performances saying, “For me, it is always about the team so if individual performance is really good, that is because the team does really well. Everybody is emphasising on the goal Mo scored and the assist he had, but both goals were from a build-up situation where we started one time with Virgil [van Dijk] and the other time, I think, even with Alisson [Becker].”
And finally, Slot proved himself entirely in line with the Liverpool faithful on at least one important point.
“When I started here, there were many things that had been told to me, but one of them was that Jürgen [Klopp] hated the 12.30 kick-off, and today the team showed that we hated the 12.30 kick-off because we were not in the game in the first half,” he agreed.
Get used to them every other week, Arne, especially after international breaks. That’s just how we roll.
Source: liverpooloffside.sbnation.com
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