Arne Slot reacts to ‘big setback’ of first defeat with Liverpool

The Dutchman said his team were not good enough in possession.

(Getty Images)

Liverpool head coach Arne Slot admits his first defeat – a shock 1-0 home loss to Nottingham Forest – is “a big setback”.

After three victories without conceding his side laboured for 72 minutes before Callum Hudson-Odoi’s strike secured the visitors’ first win at Anfield since 1969.

“It is a big setback. If you lose a home game that’s always a setback,” Slot said. “Normally this team isn’t ending up in top 10, so if you lose a game against them that’s a big disappointment, although they were organised and structured really well today.

“The only thing we had influence on was ball possession because they played a lot of long balls, so if you then take the ball back you need to go past 11 players.

“We had a lot of ball possession but only managed to create three or four quite good chances. That’s by far not enough.

“If you have so much possession and play so much in their half we need to be much better, we lost the ball so many times in simple situations. That’s the main story from the game – ball possession was not good enough.”

This was Slot’s first match after an international break and it appeared to show as passes went astray with alarming regularity, the connections built up previously becoming severed quite quickly.

Liverpool had 10 players who played the full 90 minutes in both games for their international teams and the likes of Alexis Mac Allister and Luis Diaz travelled back from South America. However, that is not out of the ordinary and Slot did not look to find excuses.

“It’s always difficult, but I don’t think it had anything to do with it,” he added.

“Players came back strong and I saw today a team that wanted to fight until the end. That wasn’t to do with energy.

“If you look at the goals we scored until now, we scored quite a few from transition moments from winning the ball back, but the other team (Forest) played over our press a lot with a lot of long balls.

“It wasn’t good enough today because too many individual performances in ball possession were not up to the standards that I’m used to from these players.”

Forest boss Nuno Espirito Santo was understandably delighted with the result, especially as the club had taken just five points from their previous 25 visits to Anfield.

“Many of our fans today in the stadium were not even born (the last time they won) so that says how hard it is,” he said.

“I’m very happy and proud of the work of the players, they worked very hard. Overall, we knew how hard the game was going to be. It is all about taking your chances.”