4 months ago
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Photo by Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images
Arne Slot gives his thoughts after Liverpool’s pre-season victory over Real Betis.
Liverpool clocked their first victory of the Slot era on Friday when they beat Real Betis 1-0 thanks to a Cody Gakpo goal.
We are slowly beginning to see Slot’s vision for how he wants his team to play, and afterwards, he shared his thoughts about the performance with the official site.
“I think we only conceded one big chance and that was somewhere around the last 10 minutes of the game,” he said. “So we controlled the game really well and in between we had a few good attacks where we created a few good chances and scored a good goal.”
He also provided some insight into what we can expect of his preferred formation during the season, and admitted this wasn’t quite the final form.
“I think during the season you will see us play with a real striker. But at this moment we have no-one available and then with Dom and Harvey [Elliott] we’ve got two No.10s, so we put them in the position they will play during the season as well,” he explained.
“So that was one of the reasons why we played with a double 10 instead of with a striker. That is maybe out of necessity. But for the rest of the style of play with trying to build up from the back, that is our style – to control the game, to not concede constant counter-attacks. That will hopefully be our style during the season.”
Since their first friendly was a closed door affair this was Slot’s inaugural experience coaching in front of Liverpool fans. He was asked about that, and —
Listen, we here at TLO pride ourselves on always providing unflinchingly honest opinions. Granted, those opinions are usually about kit styles, new haircuts, and food, for some reason. But I’m going to be real with you all here: Slot whiffed on this softball.
“If I’m coaching my team I’m only focused on 11 players,” he said. “What can they do? What can they do better? Which positions they have to take, which choices do they make? So I’m not so aware constantly of coaching Liverpool or the amount of fans that are there. My focus is mainly on the team and where I can help them during the game or during half-time.
“Of course it’s a nice experience to play in front of the fans, because they were there with a lot of people even here in the USA.”
To a fanbase used to having a strong connection with the man in charge of their club, this answer was a bit dismissive. I mean, at least use a better adjective than ‘nice’ to describe it. Someone get this man a thesaurus before he’s asked that question about leading in front of the Kop.
