Slot clear on blame after Liverpool’s tenth league defeat leaves Europe hanging by a thread

Liverpool’s tenth loss of the Premier League season leaves their prospects of European football hanging by a thread, with Arne Slot facing mounting pressure to get his team performing for the final stretch of the campaign.

With just 7 games to go, the reigning champions sit in 5th place on 49 points after two consecutive away defeats, two points behind Aston Villa who have a game in hand.

Brighton & Hove Albion striker Danny Welbeck scored both goals in the 2-1 win over Liverpool at the AMEX Stadium, firing the ball past Mamardashvili in the 14th minute with a back-post header before tapping in a second on 56 minutes.

“Of course now looking at the league table, this loss hurts a lot and it should hurt us a lot,” Slot said after the final whistle. But this was not where his thoughts lay, as he immediately moved to deflect away from the game and point the finger at past results.

Slot expresses frustration over club’s perception

“But the main problem is that we are in this position because we dropped a point at Wolves in the last minute from a deflected shot. That [Tottenham] goal last week in the 90th minute is, I would say, even a bigger problem than losing away at Brighton.”

Then Slot went on something of a rant, getting a lot off his chest when asked about the levels of sympathy people have for Liverpool’s position given the huge level of spending in the summer window.

“I have complete sympathy with that for all the people who are saying this because no one in England is used to the fact that there are also clubs that are selling players. So usually in England when a club is buying £450 million like we did, that’s adding that to the already great team you are having.

“But this club has a different model and no one wants to see that and no one wants to understand this,” he continued, “that I can also understand because fans of other teams and certain pundits don’t want to tell you that we sold for £300million ($401m).

“It’s still it’s not good enough no matter how many excuses I can come up with”

“Then, the £150 million ($201m) player is never available. That’s already one thing, and Giovanni Leoni has never been available because of his injury. That’s already the second thing, and now we’re already going underneath what we’ve sold. Jeremie Frimpong is recently much more available and Mamardashvili was one of the signings, the second goalkeeper."

“But, yes, it makes complete sense if you win the league last season and you spent £450 million that the expectations are high, and those expectations were high for the pundits, for the media, for me, for the fans. At our club we’re also looking at the situation and the challenge we had during this season, and then we might be a bit more realistic, why the season has gone why it is gone.

“But still it’s not good enough no matter how many excuses I can come up with," he admitted, “it’s still not good enough for the position you’re in right now.

He then deflected away by suggesting that Brighton were fresher due to extra rest that comes with not playing Champions League football: “Brighton did what we expected, if you face a team that has only had 62 hours of rest. The first thing they did was make it an intense game.”

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