Slot on Chelsea challenge, Alisson injury and Isak adapting (Full Presser)

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Liverpool boss Arne Slot on the challenge of facing Chelsea, Alisson’s injury and how Alexander Isak is adapting to life at the club AXA Training Centre, Liverpool, UK

Transcript

00:00Arne, first of all, can we check on the injury news?

00:04Alisson, Jugo, TK, Alisson, Hugo, P.A.?

00:08Yeah, Alisson is not part of the squad tomorrow

00:13and he's not going to travel to Brazil as well for the national team.

00:18So he will be out for Saturday.

00:22Jugo is going to train today again and let's see where he is,

00:26and the same can be said for Federico.

00:30So we have to wait and see after the session where exactly he is.

00:34Any idea on the timescale for Alisson?

00:37Yeah, that depends also on how fast a recovery goes.

00:43It's clear that he's not going to play for Brazil,

00:47and I would be surprised if he would be there in the first game

00:50after the international break,

00:52but from there on sometimes things can go a bit faster or a bit slower,

00:55so it's always difficult to say the amount of days and weeks,

00:59but for the upcoming games he will not be part of us or the Brazil team.

01:04I suppose what it does mean though, as well,

01:06is it gives Mouradash really an opportunity

01:08and the potential this weekend for his Premier League debut.

01:10Just tell us what kind of an impression he's made on you,

01:12what kind of a level you see him at.

01:14I think we've seen against Southampton how well he's adjusted.

01:22We knew that we were bringing in a very good goalkeeper,

01:25but when he plays his first game that's always the best way of seeing

01:31that he's adjusted well or not.

01:38And I think we've seen in that game that he's adjusted really well to our club,

01:43which is not a surprise because he's a quality goalkeeper,

01:46and now he can do what Cuif had to do so many times in the past,

01:52replacing Alisson, hopefully in a way like we've did so many times before.

01:59Just with Ali, is there a concern again that it's a hamstring?

02:03Why, what do you mean?

02:05Because it just seems to be a similar kind of injury,

02:07or is it a similar kind of injury to a hamstring?

02:10I'm not a doctor, so I cannot tell you if it's every time the same or whatever.

02:20What I'm mainly interested in is can he play in the weekend

02:23and how long is it going to take?

02:25And I think there are other people in the club

02:27that can give you a better answer to your question than I can.

02:31Obviously results in the past week have not been the norm during your time here.

02:37In that respect, what reaction have you seen from your players

02:40and what kind of a job have you had to do

02:42to pick them up ahead of this game against Chelsea?

02:45Nah, if the reaction is after you lose against Palace,

02:49you lose another game, you can argue if that is positive.

02:53But I saw a team that wanted to try from the first to the last second everything

02:58to get a result.

03:00Different than to the Palace game, we won much more second balls.

03:06We were, like in the Palace game, close to a result.

03:13And I've said many times last season, the margins are so small.

03:16And that's the same this season again.

03:19And we are trying to find a way that it's not about luck or bad luck,

03:26or it's not about a set-piece goal scored or against,

03:29that we are just better than that.

03:31It doesn't matter if Hugo Ikitike goes one-on-one to the goalkeeper.

03:34He gets twice or three times a pull on his shoulder,

03:37but he does everything to stay on his feet like our players mainly do.

03:42And one minute later, in the other 18-yard box,

03:46a player feels this goes to the ground as if it was the worst hit he ever had.

03:52And the referee gives a penalty.

03:54Again, this can happen and we should be better than that,

03:58that it doesn't matter if you are luck, bad luck or smart or not smart,

04:02if you score a set-piece goal or you concede too, like against Palace.

04:07By the way, if we would have had the referee that we had against Galatasaray,

04:11we wouldn't have lost against Palace,

04:13because this one blew his whistle exactly after eight minutes.

04:16But again, that has nothing to do with the current results.

04:21We need to do better, and that's what we are going to try.

04:27Alexander has had five appearances now,

04:32so I'm just wondering how you feel he's settling in?

04:36Yeah, I said to him when he started,

04:39the difficult thing will be you will have your appearances like you just said,

04:43but if you add the minutes together,

04:46he probably only had two or three 90-minute games.

04:49But yeah, that is what we inherited from the situation of him not being with the team

04:56in Newcastle.

04:58And we knew this before, so it's not an excuse.

05:01He already scored a goal, he gets fitter and fitter,

05:04but the main thing is he needs to adjust to his teammates,

05:07and the teammates need to adjust to him.

05:09And the more you play together, the better things will work.

05:11There was a great moment, not great because it didn't end up the way I wanted,

05:15but he had a great counter-movement in the Palace game,

05:18where in the end the midfielders didn't see that,

05:21and he already played the ball to the right.

05:23If he would have seen it, he would have been one-on-one to the goalkeeper.

05:26So these are the things you get if you play more together.

05:29And playing more together has been a bit harder than last season,

05:33because of Alexander Rizak, because of McAllister, because of Connor Bradley,

05:36that Dominic Subberslay has played on eight, on ten, on right full-back,

05:41for the reasons I just said.

05:45But we are, in my opinion, too focused on this season,

05:53but the second part of last season had a lot of similarities with the start of this season.

05:58With one exception is that the second part of last season we scored seven set-piece goals,

06:02which led to a lot of wins, and this season we've conceded four, I think.

06:07So we played tomorrow at Chelsea,

06:09I think they've scored more than 50% of their goals from set-pieces.

06:13So this is the new reality in the Premier League,

06:16and we were doing this really well the second part of last season,

06:22and this season we have had many good chances from set-pieces as well.

06:26Unfortunately, we didn't score yet.

06:28Does that mean you've got to work hard right now, or does it just look?

06:32What I just said, we've been very close to scoring set-pieces this season already.

06:37Ibu, a big chance against Galatasaray and a big chance against Palace,

06:41so I'm very happy about the amount of chances we generate from set-pieces.

06:47But we haven't scored yet, and yeah, is that luck, bad luck?

06:52At this moment of time I would say we are a bit unlucky.

06:55If it just keeps on going throughout the whole season,

06:58it might have to do with other things as well.

07:00But what I'm trying to say is open-play goals,

07:04the second part of last season and the first part of last season,

07:07is the main difference.

07:09I don't think we do things different,

07:11I do see teams doing a lot of things different to us.

07:14So the first part of last season, Jürgen gave me a lot of gifts,

07:20but one of the gifts he also gave me was ending up first the year before

07:23and fifth that year before.

07:25And him being so well-known that a new manager came in and everybody thought,

07:29oh, let's start to play against Liverpool.

07:31And teams played in a completely different way in the first half of the season against us

07:37than they did when we were top of the league after half of the season,

07:40and when we were top of the Champions League after the first part of the season.

07:45And I can see this going now into this part of this season.

07:49And we have to find answers to that.

07:52And last season one of the answers was a set-piece.

07:55Like many teams, unlock low blocks with set-pieces.

07:59And this season we haven't done that yet.

08:06I just wonder how Bradley and Frimpong are reacting at the moment

08:10to maybe not getting as much time at right-back as they might like,

08:13given the form and the job that Bozlai's doing there for you?

08:17And what is the last part?

08:20Does that mean that he does so well in that position?

08:23Yeah, because Bozlai's doing a good job for you there.

08:25I just wonder, are they frustrated maybe that they're not getting more time?

08:28I don't think so at the moment,

08:30because Conor Bradley has been out with an injury in pre-season

08:34that brought him into the season with an injury,

08:37and Jeremy Frimpong the same.

08:39He's been out with an injury as well.

08:41So I think I would be surprised if players are complaining

08:45that they don't play if they are injured.

08:47That would be something new to me.

08:49And yes, they've came back from their injuries,

08:52but like Alexander Isak, at least we don't believe in it.

08:57It's not possible if you've been out for three or four weeks with an injury,

08:59that you can play three games in a week because you're not prepared for that.

09:03So that's why we had to adjust in that position with Dominic Soboslai,

09:07which he's done very, very, very well,

09:10except for the moment where we conceded the penalty maybe.

09:15But yes, that is one moment in many minutes he's played there.

09:21Sure. And just one on the form of Mo Salah,

09:24it's five goals in his last 20 competitive Liverpool appearances.

09:27I just wondered by his very sky-high standards,

09:30do you think he's a little out of form at the moment?

09:33I think also over there I see the same as the second part of last season,

09:38where he scored 12 goals, five from a penalty, one from a set-piece,

09:42so six open play goals.

09:44So he is part of a team that faces different opposition than the first half of last season.

09:56So to make that maybe a little bit more of an insight,

10:00if you compare how we won the away game against Man United,

10:04where they tried to play out from the back and we took the ball three times off them,

10:08and you compare that the way United played at Anfield,

10:12where Onana only went long,

10:17then that is one of the answers why it's more difficult for us to score from open play goals.

10:24And Mo has a part of this already, you could see this in the second half of last season,

10:30and the first part of this season, but now you're focused on Mo,

10:33the next time we're focused on Florian, then we're focused on Cody.

10:36What I'm trying to say is that we don't score as many open play goals anymore

10:42as we did the first part of last season.

10:44And this is something we work on very hard,

10:49and the more we will play together in the new set-up, the better that will go.

10:56But yeah, we still struggle a bit to find enough goals from open play

11:07the second part of last season and the first part of this season.

11:11Last question with Beth, please.

11:13Can you just ask about the name of Norte,

11:15because Pestlin has been a little bit of a criticism for his performances,

11:19and obviously the whole contract situation is happening over it and over it,

11:23and how do you assess where he's at at the moment in his performances so far this season?

11:27Now what I think is if you are losing a game of football,

11:33what we did against Galatasaray and against Palace,

11:36then it doesn't help if you lose a ball a few times, very easy.

11:39He's been one of them, definitely not the only one,

11:42because against Galatasaray I think, apart from the penalty,

11:46they've got three or four moments from us losing a very simple ball without any pressure,

11:57which happened to him once in the Crystal Palace game and once against Galatasaray.

12:03So if you then lose a game of football, there's so much focus on that moment

12:07and all of a sudden 90 minutes have been very, very, very poor,

12:12which is not the way I analyse a game, especially not afterwards,

12:16where I have the time to analyse, to watch it one more time

12:18and see what we did well and what we did wrong.

12:21But in the last two games it's been obvious and clear

12:24that we've made a few errors that not only him, also others,

12:29that we are not used to.

12:31If you do things that people are not used to and you lose a game of football,

12:36then normally he, other ones, the manager gets criticised.

12:43Thank you, guys.

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