‘Salah was fit to play 90 after one day’s training’
Liverpool manager highlights Joe Gomez’s contribution
Arne Slot saluted Mohamed Salah’s professionalism and singled out Joe Gomez for praise after Liverpool climbed to fourth in the Champions League table with a commanding win in Marseille.
Liverpool, who host Qarabag at Anfield next week in their final group game, delivered a fine performance and result against Roberto De Zerbi’s team to record a ninth win in 11 European away fixtures.
Arne Slot has said it hurts his principles as an attacking coach to hear his Liverpool team described as boring but he could not entirely disagree on current form.
Liverpool have stabilised after a damaging sequence of nine defeats in 12 matches, the club’s worst return in 71 years, with a nine-game unbeaten run but are struggling to produce convincing performances. Successive draws against Fulham and Leeds have prompted further criticism of Slot’s style and resulted in the champions falling 14 points behind the leaders, Arsenal, who they face at the Emirates Stadium on Thursday.
‘Every single game we play it’s hard work,’ says Slot
Liverpool fourth before trip to Fulham on Sunday
Arne Slot has described Liverpool’s first half of the season as a “constant battle” and admitted the title race appeared to be a straight fight between Arsenal and Manchester City.
The Premier League champions are 12 points adrift of Mikel Arteta’s leaders after a goalless draw with Leeds on New Year’s Day. Liverpool are unbeaten in eight matches and back in the Champions League places after recovering from the club’s worst run in 71 years, yet remain unconvincing. Slot conceded his team are not “flying” or in contention to retain their title at present.
Liverpool head coach’s new full-backs have struggled
Slot expects improvement as squad and signings settle
Arne Slot has said Liverpool remain “a work in progress” in both full-back positions but backed Jeremie Frimpong and Milos Kerkez to make their mark as his team stabilise.
Slot admits Liverpool are still adjusting to the end of the Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson era with injuries and disruption limiting the impact of their designated successors, including Conor Bradley. Frimpong has improved since returning from his second hamstring injury of the season, however, and provided assists for Hugo Ekitiké and Ryan Gravenberch in the recent victories over Tottenhamand Wolves. Slot believes the summer signings Frimpong and Kerkez, from Bayer Leverkusen and Bournemouth respectively, will prove valuable assets for Liverpool, with their pace essential for the modern game.
Jota’s two young sons were mascots for 2-1 home win
Slot: ‘The football world again showed how to behave’
Arne Slot praised Liverpool and Wolves fans for “showing the football world how to behave” as Diogo Jota’s two English clubs came together to pay tribute to the late striker at Anfield.
Jota’s two young sons, Dinis and Duarte, were mascots for the first game between the clubs since the Portugal international died in July. Liverpool supporters applauded when Wolves’ fans sang their song for Jota in the 18th minute and vice versa when Anfield acclaimed the late striker in the 20th minute, based on his squad numbers at the two clubs. The entire Wolves squad had visited the memorial to Jota outside Anfield to pay their respects the night before Liverpool’s 2-1 win.
Manager says the ban Xavi Simons faces is ‘too harsh’
Slot says his ‘gut feeling’ on Isak injury is not positive
A frustrated Thomas Frank took aim at two decisions, both involving the use of the video assistant referee system, that helped swing proceedings in Liverpool’s favour during his Tottenham side’s stormy 2-1 defeat on Saturday night.
Spurs finished with nine men after Cristian Romero was dismissed while they sought an equaliser in added time. But it was the red card handed to Xavi Simons in the first half, upgraded from a yellow after the VAR had slowed down his late challenge on Virgil van Dijk, that infuriated Frank the most. He cut an animated figure on the touchline as Simons departed, and said later that John Brooks’s original decision should have stood.
Arne Slot said Liverpool’s players gave everything he could have asked after they put Mohamed Salah’s absence aside to inflict a first European home defeat on Inter in more than three years.
The Liverpool head coach conceded that Dominik Szoboszlai’s decisive 88th-minute penalty – awarded for a shirt pull by Alessandro Bastoni on Florian Wirtz – would probably not have been given in the Premier League. But following the difficulties caused by Salah’s incendiary interview at Leeds on Saturday, Slot was thrilled with the response of his team at San Siro.
Head coach also insisted he is not ‘weak’ amid row
Egyptian left out of squad for game at Inter
Arne Slot has cast further doubt on Mohamed Salah’s future at Liverpool by admitting that he has “no clue” whether the forward has played his last game for the club. The head coach also insisted his politeness should not be mistaken for weakness after leaving Salah out of the Champions League game against Inter on Tuesday.
Slot gave his first public reaction on Monday to Salah’s incendiary interview at Leeds when previewing Liverpool’s match at San Siro. He denied Salah’s claims that their relationship had broken down and said only the Egypt international knows who supposedly threw him under a bus and wants him out of the club.
Egyptian’s calculated outburst is a challenge to management and their support for embattled Arne Slot
Mohamed Salah’s relationship with Liverpool is broken. That is abundantly clear after the incendiary interview at Elland Road on Saturday night that also poses a test of the club’s relationship with Arne Slot. The next revelation will be the extent of internal support for the coach who delivered Liverpool’s record-equalling 20th league title eight months ago.
Salah may have been emotional having been on the bench for the third successive game, but stunning waiting reporters not only by stopping to speak but by dropping a series of grenades during a post-match interview lasting more than seven minutes was not a case of heart ruling head. It never is when one of the greatest players to pull on the red shirt deigns to address the media. Whether it is criticism of contract negotiations, applying a little more pressure to get an agreeable deal done or, in this instance, piling more problems on Slot, Salah’s words are calculated to achieve what he wants.
Forward may be dropped from Champions League squad
Saudi clubs set to renew interest during transfer window
Mohamed Salah could be omitted from Liverpool’s Champions League trip to Milan to play Inter on Tuesday after his outspoken attack on the club and Arne Slot.
Salah’s future at Anfield is in question after the incendiary interview he gave at Leeds on Saturday, in which he accused the club of throwing him under a bus. The 33-year-old also claimed he no longer has a relationship with Slot, who omitted the forward from his starting lineup for a third game in succession.
Salah benched at Leeds for third consecutive match
Mohamed Salah has accused Liverpool of throwing him “under the bus” after being left out of the starting lineup for the third game running as the champions drew at Leeds, saying he has been made a scapegoat for the poor start to the season and casting severe doubt on his future at the club.
“I can’t believe … I’m sitting on the bench for 90 minutes,” the Egypt international said. “The third time on the bench, I think for the first time in my career. I’m very, very disappointed. I have done so much for this club down the years and especially last season. Now I’m sitting on the bench and I don’t know why.
Not since 2014 have Liverpool struggled so much, with questions aimed at directors and players such as Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz
“Would you say this is Roy bad or Brendan bad?” was one of the more repeatable questions asked in the Anfield press box in between PSV Eindhoven’s third and fourth goals on Wednesday. The correct answer would have been “Don Welsh bad”, given he was the last Liverpool manager to preside over nine defeats in 12 games, back in 1953-54. But the on-the-spot consensus was “Brendan bad” for reasons that may increase anxiety at Fenway Sports Group as the club’s owners desperately await a recovery under Arne Slot.
The Roy Hodgson era, airbrushed from history by some at Liverpool, is too low a base for comparisons with a Premier League champion. There are, however, some parallels between the current Liverpool crisis and the final 16 months of Brendan Rodgers’ reign at Anfield. The 2014-15 season was the last time confidence in a Liverpool manager or head coach began to drain. It was also the last time the impressive development of a Liverpool team – one that went agonisingly close to an unexpected title triumph in Rodgers’ case – not only came to an abrupt halt but veered into a steep decline with several new signings on board. FSG must hope the comparisons go no further, because that decline was precipitated by self-sabotage in the summer transfer window of 2014 and there is no conclusive evidence so far that it has avoided an expensive repeat in 2025.
Head coach insists he has support of the club’s hierarchy
Admits to ‘very difficult’ 10 minutes in PSV defeat
Arne Slot has vowed to “fight on” at Liverpool and insisted support from the club’s hierarchy has not wavered following the alarming Anfield defeats by Nottingham Forest and PSV Eindhoven.
The Liverpool head coach met the club’s sporting director, Richard Hughes, on Thursday to dissect the Champions League defeat by PSV that extended his team’s dire run to nine losses in 12 games. It is Liverpool’s worst sequence of results since an identical run in 1953-54 and has heightened the pressure on Slot before Sunday’s Premier League trip to West Ham.
Liverpool on run of six defeats in seven league matches
‘You would never have expected us to have lost so much’
Arne Slot has admitted he feels guilty about Liverpool’s “ridiculous” slump, a collapse that no one at the club envisaged, and said he must prove himself to everyone at Anfield on a daily basis.
Slot is dealing with the worst run of his managerial career after Nottingham Forest inflicted a sixth defeat in seven Premier League games, and eighth defeat in 11 matches in all competitions, on the champions on Saturday. Cody Gakpo described the 3-0 reverse at home to Sean Dyche’s team as a “kind of embarrassment”.
Coach’s assistant in tough time at Feyenoord sees parallels with issues his former boss needs to deal with at Anfield
Just over five weeks after Arne Slot’s Feyenoord had lost a tight Conference League final by a goal to Roma in 2022, they suffered a 7-0 home defeat by Copenhagen in their first pre-season friendly. Some of the Dutch club’s internationals were on holiday, seven of their starters from the final would leave that summer and Copenhagen were well ahead in preparations, but even so, the scoreline was bruising. It felt as if Slot had to start all over again.
“I can remember it like yesterday,” says Marino Pusic, Slot’s assistant at Feyenoord and earlier at AZ. “The score could have been even higher – that says enough.” Copenhagen’s then coach, Jess Thorup, described it as more akin to “a training session than an actual friendly match”. Two weeks later a stronger Feyenoord side lost 4-0 to the Belgian club Union Saint-Gilloise. Then came home defeats by Lyon and Osasuna.
Arne Slot: ‘Florian needs time to adapt to teammates’
Head coach hopes to have Isak available for City clash
Arne Slot has rejected Arsène Wenger’s theory that playing Florian Wirtz as a No 10 has “destroyed Liverpool’s midfield” and insisted the £116m signing will prove a special talent wherever he operates for the Premier League champions.
Wirtz impressed when playing off the left in the Champions League defeat of Real Madrid on Tuesday, having previously struggled to make an impact in a central attacking role. The Germany international’s difficult start in the Premier League – where he is yet to score or assist before Sunday’s visit to Manchester City – prompted a withering assessment by Wenger before the visit of Real.
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