Arne Slot breaks silence on Liverpool’s embarrassing Wolves loss – ‘A good thing’ | Football | Sport

Arne Slot insists it’s “a good thing and a nice thing” that Liverpool get to return to Wolves on Friday night just three days after their embarrassing 2-1 Premier League defeat to the same opponents. Andre’s deflected 94th-minute strike looped over Alisson and secured Wolves only their third victory in 30 top-flight matches this season against the defending champions. Liverpool had only made it 1-1 in the 83rd minute with Mohamed Salah pouncing on a mistake to quickly cancel out Rodrigo Gomes’ opener.

But the Reds ultimately slumped to a very disappointing defeat in their bid to qualify for the Champions League. The two teams do battle again, at the same venue, under the lights on Friday in the fifth round of the FA Cup. And Slot insists his team now have something to prove as they seek revenge at Molineux. Reminded by TNT Sports that Slot takes his team back to Wolverhampton this week, he replied: “Yeah which is a good thing and a nice thing because we have something to prove on Friday.”

Slot’s charges suffered the ignominy of becoming the first Premier League team in history to lose five matches to goals after the 90th minute in a single season. On their ninth league loss of the campaign, Slot told TNT: “Like you said, bad result. Far from good first half. Second half there was a bit more urgency.

“We were getting closer and closer to scoring a goal but then conceded probably the first moment they arrived in and around our box. We immediately struck back, first by hitting the post, afterwards Mo [scoring]. We were twice close making the winner, with Mo Salah once on the counter-attack and with Virgil [van Dijk]’s header.

“In the end we conceded a deflected shot which wasn’t even a chance. Of course [it’s frustrating], even more because we know how hard we have to work to score a goal. Recently we’re mainly scoring from set-pieces. We create enough chances but find it quite hard to convert those chances into goals. Conceding two is too much to get a result.

“I saw more urgency in the second half than the first half. Also in the first half we had a lot of ball possession but weren’t able to penetrate their 18-yard box a lot of times. We were able to do that more in the second half.”

Liverpool are consistently starting games slowly. They have scored only three goals all season in the first half of Premier League away matches. And the Dutchman added: “Last week we had a very good start and scored three goals. But there are two teams on the pitch and usually the team we face is fitter in the first half than the second half. Sometimes you need to put something into it first half to keep them running.

Ensure our latest sport headlines always appear at the top of your Google Search by making us a Preferred Source. Click here to activate or add us as a Preferred Source in your Google search settings.

“We had so much ball possession and they were a bit more tired in the second half. That’s why the second half opened up a little bit more. But yeah, hardly conceded a chance, created not so much but more than they did. But the result is again a 2-1 loss.”

Asked if it’s more frustrating because Liverpool have yet again squandered momentum, having won three league games in a row before this, the manager responded: “Yeah that’s fair. We are losing far too many football games and dropping points. Was it again in extra time that we conceded? Yeah. So the three times we lost in the last 22 games, was all three times in extra time.”

While visibly downbeat captain Virgil van Dijk told the broadcaster: “It’s down to ourselves. We were slow, we were predictable, sloppy in possession and wrong decision-making. We didn’t concede chances but if you perform like that then a result like this can be a result of that. That’s a fact. It was disappointing.

“There is not one reason why that’s the case [that Liverpool start games slowly]. The game is in general more analysed why things are happening on the pitch and we as a team want to start the game as quick as we can. Last game we did. Today we had the majority of the possession but we were still making the wrong decisions and couldn’t find the end product.

“We’ve come here with a couple of clean sheets and defensively been very solid. But it is what it is and we have to move quickly on because we come back here in a couple of days. We want to do well in the FA Cup as well. The whole season has not been easy. It was always going to be an up and down season for multiple reasons.

“The league is strong, it’s demanding, every three or four days it’s a big battle. We need everyone at their best, we need a big squad in this sense and we need the results. In the last couple of weeks we had the results and today we didn’t. It says we still have work to do. That’s pretty obvious. That’s what we should focus on.”

EXPRESS SPORT ON FB! Get all the best sports news and much more on our Facebook page