“I’m sorry guys, I was completely wrong for saying ….”- Liverpool Boss Arne Slot makes a honest Nottingham Forest team talk admission after what £23.5M Forest star displayed against Liverpool at the City ground stadium
“I’m sorry guys, I was completely wrong for saying ….”- Liverpool Boss Arne Slot makes a honest Nottingham Forest team talk admission after what £23.5M Forest star displayed against Liverpool at the City ground stadium
‘I was completely wrong’ – Arne Slot makes honest Liverpool team talk admission after Nottingham Forest draw
Arne Slot reacts to Liverpool’s 1-1 top-of-the-table Premier League draw at Nottingham Forest
Arne Slot praised Liverpool’s stirring second-half comeback at Nottingham Forest that proved wrong the half-time message to his players. Substitute Diogo Jota’s strike on 66 minutes wiped out Chris Wood’s early effort to earn the Reds a 1-1 Premier League draw at the City Ground on Tuesday evening.
The result maintained Liverpool’s six-point lead at the summit over Forest with title contenders Chelsea and Manchester City also both being held on the night.
Slot’s side dominated after half-time with the home team indebted to a series of excellent saves from goalkeeper Matz Sels.
And despite his team dropping points for the fourth time in their last seven games, the Liverpool boss was delighted with the character and quality of his players in the second half.
“I couldn’t have asked for more today,” said Slot. “I think most people talk about the second half, I’m more positive about that than the first half.
“But if you play at this ground against this team that is in this form, hardly concedes a chance in every single game, and have so many counter-attack threats, we conceded only one counter-attack in 98 minutes of total domination, unfortunately for us it went in.
“Our ball possession in the second half led to a lot of chances. You have to give credit to the way Forest defended, they threw themselves in front of everything and had a goalkeeper who has had an outstanding season this year and tonight again.
“I said to them at half-time, don’t get frustrated, you won’t get many chances, the game will probably be slow but just keep focusing on what you have to do and hopefully we will get two or three chances and let’s try to score from that.
“But I was completely wrong as they created chance after chance after chance.”
Slot added: “Being 1-0 down over here and so hard to score against this team was not what we wanted, we wanted three points, but what I want and what the fans should want and the players want is they give it everything, and that’s what the players did today combined with outstanding football in the second half.”
Jota’s goal was with his first touch having been brought on to replace Ibrahima Konate, heading in a corner from Kostas Tsimikas who had been introduced at the same time.
“Have I ever had a substitution pay off so quickly? No, I don’t think so,” said Slot. “I don’t remember one although I don’t feel any pride in the substitution because you make one because you have a certain game plan and we did this as we brought an attacker in for a defender to play even more attacking football than we did as we needed goals.
“Scoring from a set-piece isn’t what I had in mind when I brought the two of them in. But of course Jots can score a goal and Kostas has a good set-piece.”
And when asked if the game had unearthed any areas in the squad that could be improved during this month’s transfer window, Slot responded: “You saw today that I can still strengthen the team or impact the game with the substitutions I have on the bench. Not for the first time this season, these players have helped us.”
