2 months ago
189 
Photo by Robbie Jay Barratt - AMA/Getty Images
After a near perfect start to life under new manager Arne Slot, Liverpool crashed back to earth on Saturday in a 1-0 defeat at Anfield to Nottingham Forest.
Liverpool’s perfect start was always going to end sooner or later. After sweeping aside Ipswich, Brentford, and Manchester United by a combined score of 7-0, though, few would have gone into Saturday’s Premier League matchup against Nottingham Forest expecting it to end the way that it did.
An at times lethargic first half where an unchanged side looked tired and following an international break that saw many of them playing two games and flying half way around the world might have been explicable—and the sort of explicable the coaches should have seen coming—but the second half was more surprising.
Whatever half-time tweaks were made didn’t seem to help the cause, and the second half substitutions when they arrived involving moving Trent Alexander-Arnold into midfield and switching to three at the back backfired and only made the Reds look worse. It was, all told, not the best of outings.
“It was a very disappointing day,” captain Virgil van Dijk said following the match. “The result and also most of the performance was too rushed and we lost too many second balls. They got momentum in terms of winning the right challenges and in terms of ourselves we weren’t good enough. That’s the disappointing part.
“It’s difficult for me to say why. Everyone is coming back from different places and playing a different way but still I think even today when we were not at our best we created chances and it should have gone better. But it is a performance we are not happy with. We expect a lot better from ourselves.”
Along with looking short of their best individually, Liverpool’s tactics seemed off compared to the first three games. No longer were they focused on a deep build-up seeking to draw their opponent up the pitch, instead quickly moving the ball forward quickly to try to directly pressure Forest’s deep block.
Once forward, in past games this season when a defence had proven stubborn, Liverpool would always look to stretch the deep block vertically by moving the ball back—looking to draw defenders out of their positions in their own end before once again triggering an attack. Here, they didn’t.
Individual errors by the players from the start. A failure to apply tactics on the ball that had served them well in their first three games under Arne Slot. A failure then by Slot and the coaching staff to make tactical tweaks at the half or with second half substitutions that positively impacted the game.
Liverpool’s perfect start was always going to end, perhaps. It’s surprising that it ended in quite the manner it did in Saturday’s 1-0 defeat to Forest at Anfield, though. Now, they have two days to reset, to rest, and to prepare for their next challenge: AC Milan on the road in the new-look Champions League.
“It was a disappointing afternoon, something we didn’t want to happen, but we have to turn this around and make this a sort of a reality check,” Van Dijk added. “We have to be better for the rest of the season because if you want to achieve things this season the contrast between the games we played is too big.”
“Obviously everyone is disappointed but we also remind ourselves Tuesday is another big game. If you want to dwell on things it’s going to backfire. We all should be disappointed but in a couple of hours we will be thinking about recovery and being ready for Tuesday. That’s what we have to do.”
