Slot Talk: "It Took Us Nine Months to Lose Twice in a Row"
Yesterday at 10:30 AM
Liverpool are coming off their toughest week of the 2024-25 season, but manager Arne Slot doesn't want to get too carried away with the doom and gloom.
In sport, it's a truism that you should never believe you're as good as you are at your best and that you should also never believe you're as bad as at your worst, and for Liverpool it's the latter that's perhaps the focus heading into the March international break.
Following a difficult week that saw the Reds dumped out of the Champions League by a Paris Saint-Germain side that often seemed able to dominate them physically and then a League Cup final where they appeared barely competitive against Newcastle, manager Arne Slot wants to focus a little on the larger context.
"It took us seven, eight, nine months to lose twice in a row," Slot noted following Sunday's disheartening 2-1 final loss. "That now happens against two teams, one a favourite for the Champions League and then Newcastle is a very good team we knew already at St. James' Park.
"For Paris Saint-Germain, probably if you can beat us in that style of play you are probably the best in Europe at the moment. They still have to show if they can do this in the coming months, but even Liverpool can lose football games—that's what can happen."
Slot added that while many have focused on how many minutes his key players have logged—Mohamed Salah, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Andy Robertson, Dominik Szoboszlai, Ibrahima Konaté, and Ryan Gravenberch have all already played more in 2024-25 than last season—he thinks Sunday was about application and not exhaustion.
Newcastle, as the manager sees it, simply executed their game plan better, defending deep and finding ways to bypass Liverpool's midfield and press. How the team now react in the coming weeks as they try to secure the Premier League title, then, will be telling.
"We were outplayed in their style," Slot added. "That is what you can call outplayed, but is that outworking? Or is that one of their biggest qualities, to play and win aerial duels and physique duels? Outplayed for me is if you don't touch the ball, if every time you're too late.
"But they deserved to win because they made it so the game went in the way that they wanted it to go. So yes, they deserved to win, but it wasn't like we were only running after them. We had to defend a lot of long balls, second balls, and that's their strength."
