- 13 hours ago
Arne Slot on Liverpool form and West Ham challenge on Sunday
27/11/2025
AXA training centre, Liverpool, UK
27/11/2025
AXA training centre, Liverpool, UK
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00I know obviously last night you said that you hadn't spoken to Richard Hughes or any of the
00:10ownership group last night but have you been able to since and if so what those
00:15conversations be like has the support that you spoke about last night been
00:18reiterated to you? Yeah we've had the same conversations as we've had since I'm
00:23here and as I'm not sure if I said last night but we fight on and we try to
00:34improve that's what we all try but the conversations have been the same as
00:40they've been for the past one and a half years. For you at the moment is there an anger
00:44maybe that's too strong is there a frustration or a feeling of being let
00:48down by your players at the moment who aren't necessarily reaching the standards
00:52that we've come to expect from them? No not at all although I do agree with you
01:00that our standards and with our I mean the team have not been of the standards that
01:05we are used to and that we want so we think we can play better than we do but
01:11last season when we did really well there was a lot of focus on certain
01:14individuals and I always said it should be about the team and the team makes the
01:18individuals look very good and if the opposite is happening we should also
01:22look at the team and not at the individuals so so that's that's where it's about for me.
01:28But you also said that you have to look at yourself what can you do different if anything?
01:34Nah that's not that's not so easy to say what can I do different but it's quite normal if you win or lose or draw that you reflect on a game
01:42which decisions have you made what have you done during the week all kind of usual things
01:48managers do if they win or lose but maybe you do it a little bit more if you lose you
01:53try to find the answer to what is needed to win a game of football and yeah in the end it's about
02:01it's about doing what this club is about is keep fighting and no matter how difficult it is we have to
02:09fight together but it would also be nice if we would reward ourselves in the moments we play well
02:18because yeah people are very focused and correctly about the parts we don't play well but there are
02:24definitely large parts of the games where we do play well and where we do create a lot of chances and we
02:29tend to forget to reward ourselves in those moments and every small mistake or small error immediately
02:35leads to us conceding a goal and that is a very bad cocktail to have.
02:40It kind of follows on to my final question is how pressurised a situation is this then for you as a group
02:46for you personally and how inhibiting can that pressure be?
02:49There's a lot of pressure if you work or play at a top club and even more so if you start losing more games
02:56than this club or this players or this manager is used to so then there's always pressure but
03:02there was a lot of pressure last season as well for us to win the league and now it's a different
03:07kind of pressure because we've lost so many games but what it does to me i can i can just do
03:14the same but i don't have to play so maybe my job is a little bit easier if it comes to this
03:19because i think it's hard for every player if you are in a bad run of results if you go down immediately
03:27after three minutes and then you play a very good a very good a good first half and then 10 minutes
03:34after half time again you concede so we got knock we get knock after knock after knock which is hard but
03:39um that's why i keep saying that especially when that happens we have to keep fighting and that's
03:48what we've done so well last season and what this club is about for so many years and that's what we
03:54expect the minimum what i and we expect is that we do this over 90 minutes which is not always easy
04:00if you get knock after knock after knock can i just ask you about the fitness of some of your
04:06players obviously with his problem that he picked up and how florian and allison are as well
04:15ali trained again with the team today so we hope and expect him to be available in the weekend
04:21florian will have his final day of rehab tomorrow so uh if that all goes well he could train with the
04:29team on saturday and the third one was you go yeah uh of course today was recovery but
04:39they don't expect it that it has to be a big issue but yeah games come fast so let's see for the
04:45weekend but um it isn't it shouldn't be have to be a big issue and as far as western are concerned
04:52as well it feels like a long time for you that they're moving in a different direction now under
04:57the new night's better to stand up it seems we've got a new wind and a fresh confidence of their own
05:02i suppose how do you feel like you're doing yeah like you said he's having an impact on their results
05:12he's done so well everywhere he works here in england and um didn't so well at forest now he's doing well at
05:20west ham again so it's um he's proven to be a difficult manager to play against not only for
05:27me but for everyone because he's always has a very good game plan and uh it's a tough team to beat at
05:32the moment west ham which was different maybe in the beginning of the season but we face them now and
05:39that's why um yeah we we definitely need to be ready for a challenge because that's what they will give us
05:47because they know uh of course after our recent uh run of results that um that's probably different
05:54for them to play against us now than it was three or four months ago looking at the xg stats for the
06:02last three games liverpool's is 6.59 and your opponents 5.39 combined i just wonder what what would
06:09you take from that frustration uh xg don't always tell you the right story because um i think it's
06:20also important when do you get those chances so um and after you concede you tend to be more open
06:28than uh when you're one or two nil up i think when we were one nil up against real madrid and two nil
06:32against phila we hardly conceded the chance and that has happened in many more of our games when we were
06:37leading but yeah when you chase the game you concede normally more but i think a large part of this xg
06:45that we create is in the first part of the game as well uh and that's why uh one of the players said
06:52today i just uh uh use that quote we we we don't reward ourselves for good faces of the game or good
07:00parts of the game and this is probably what is uh best shown in our xg created because it's ridiculous
07:09because normally you score more than you xg and the amount of times you see good team scoring three or
07:14four goals from from a low xg value and then if you see our xg yesterday evening but yeah i didn't need
07:23xg to know that we missed a lot of chances and uh kurtz jones gave quite a passionate interview after the
07:29game last night i just wondered what you thought of of what he said and that kind of passion that anger
07:35that frustration how does it feel when you when you hear your players speaking like that then you assume
07:40that i heard what he said and that is what i didn't so i uh after the game i have to do 120 interviews
07:49he said that he was past being angry and spoke about wanting to to be a dog and tackle out there
07:54do some of those kind of things as well really good if you bring it to the to the game and i think
07:59this is what the players at least tried to do yesterday all the the the data in terms of running
08:05data were were very high they had a lot of personal best so they they tried yesterday a lot but it didn't
08:13lead to anything uh in terms of results uh and and i think this is what uh what he is saying if we can
08:21bring this as a team to the game this is where is the minimum i expect in the minimum defense expect
08:26from us that we fight and this is i use the word fight he uses probably some other words but i think
08:32we're on the same page when it comes to how we want to get out of this situation
08:36just wondering how you go about restoring damage confidence because i assume that's something else
08:45you can't train that into them but is there anything you can do to try and try and help them because
08:50it's obviously morale is so low on the pitch at times and that last thing i think should be said
08:58extra at times because i don't see it being low when we start the game i didn't even saw it low after we
09:04conceded the one nil yesterday um but after the third the fourth or the fifth knock then after the
09:133-1 i also saw a very difficult five to ten minutes um but before that even on at when we conceded the 2-1
09:21again had a disappointment we were able to generate enough chances enough xg to make the 2-2 uh but after
09:30they scored the 3-1 i could indeed see that it hurt the players and that wasn't the period where our
09:38fighting spirit was the best in the game to to say it mildly when they're in that mindset are you
09:44are you confident your your message is still getting across to them after the 3-1 it's very difficult to
09:52get a message across to them when i'm not at the sideline but before the game and during halftime
09:58i think the message comes across to them if i see how we create our chances it is a lot of the
10:05things we train and where we what is in in the meeting um but unfortunately it doesn't lead to
10:12goals and that is that is difficult for them for me for our fans for everyone but that the message comes
10:18across is is very clear to me if i see the way we generate our chances and that is a lot from the work
10:26we do on the training pitch and during the meetings so yeah that's that's for me that's obvious but
10:32yeah when we're free one down then it's difficult to get a message across if you're standing so far
10:39not so far but if you're not standing on the pitch
10:43can i just ask about joe gomez i know you obviously said the other day you had an injection last week but
10:48how close is he to being able to play sort of meaningful minutes how close he could have been involved
10:55yesterday as well in terms of minutes um but yeah when we are two one down or three one down
11:03i tend to make offensive substitutions uh and for him to start a game is also definitely a possibility
11:10but conaté didn't train two days before the game he was a bit of a liability uh uh two days before
11:17and then if you don't have that many defenders to start with two players that maybe might not be able
11:22to play the whole 90 that's kind of a risk as well so i decided uh to have to keep him uh yeah how do you
11:30say this but uh you know probably what i mean um to keep him there for if ibu was injured and not to
11:37have to make two substitutions because then probably would have ended up with one or two defenders
11:45how did you sleep last night what do you think no not not the best not not completely poor it wasn't
11:54as if i lie awake for the whole night but uh although if we win i don't sleep well uh also
12:02so then there's probably a lot of adrenaline and now there's a lot of thoughts going through your
12:06mind but i had a few hours of sleep enough to be able to be fresh again this morning
12:11peter bolz yesterday said after the game that he would have a drink with you
12:16did you have that drink what did you talk about no unfortunately i asked him to come in but
12:21um i had quite a lot of media work to do uh and afterwards when i came in it was already a bit
12:29too late so um i will text him today to one more time congratulate him uh so we didn't have time to
12:36have drinks now is he also someone you would talk to about having some advice for facing this challenge
12:43because he's been through this before for you the first time i think there are a lot of people which i could
12:49call for advice but there are a lot of people working at this club that can give me very good
12:53advice as well you spoke just now about the messaging between you and the players and also you spoke
13:01about how those good moments mostly in the first half compared to the second half if you think back
13:06to the last season there were so many occasions where you were able to change things at half time and
13:11get an improved performance so do you think there's any difference in how you're adapting and assessing
13:16what's happening in that half time period or do you feel like the players are still taking on
13:21their messaging in the same way i think we always remember the last one or two games the most
13:28i think our second half performance against city was much better than our first half performance
13:33if i go further back so the first loss we had was against crystal palace our second half performance was
13:38much much much much much much better than the first half performance so so it's it has been all the
13:50losses we've had have had a different story and the last two indeed the second half wasn't as good as
13:56the first half but in the last two we conceded straight after half time after already being disappointed in
14:03the first half not getting what we thought we deserved and um and like i said in my opinion the
14:12players kept on fighting after 2-1 because we were able to create two or three very good moments and
14:17chances the cody kakpo header is i think usually a goal um but this moment of time not for us uh we've
14:26we've we've generated enough set pieces in that part of the game as well but after the 3-1 again that's the part
14:32people tend to remember which is normal because the last part of the game uh that was of course not
14:37of the standards uh and of the fighting spirit we would like to have in our team well when you
14:44lose three successful games do you look at the team i think it maybe needs a job do you look at the
14:49the place about less about less minutes the likes of goldness and they might be able to run the team now
14:56or have you seen enough from players that this can change the ones you have to play i think you
15:02consider everything uh until now i've decided differently um but they train with us every
15:10single day and they can prove themselves in those moments and um yeah it's always a balance between
15:17if you don't change people think why you should change more and i think there was a period of this
15:21season where we lost and i made a few changes where people complained about the fact that i made a few
15:25changes too much and there was never any uh any any time the same team so um of course uh i consider
15:37but i cannot tell you what what the end uh product of that consideration is for uh for sunday yet
15:43thank you
15:54you
Be the first to comment