ReactionArne Slot press conference: Lille patience, UCL last-16 qualification, Salah and more
The Reds confirmed a place in the top eight of the league phase after goals from Mohamed Salah and Harvey Elliott at Anfield on Tuesday night made it seven wins from seven in the competition this season.
Salah opened the scoring in the first half, though the visitors pegged back their hosts via Jonathan David's strike after the hour, which came within moments of Aissa Mandi's dismissal for a second bookable offence.
Elliott had the final say on the night in minute 67, however, netting with a deflected strike from outside the area to earn the result.
Following the win, Slot met the media to answer questions in a post-match press conference – read what he had to say below…
On qualifying for the last 16 of the Champions League and Barcelona's late goal denying Liverpool top spot for the moment…
Let's start with a compliment for the referee in Lisbon. For the times I've worked in football I saw four minutes of extra time and then there were three minutes of time-delaying and then at four minutes the referee blew his whistle. But this referee kept on playing for a while, so maybe that was not in our advantage this time, but I like to see these things.
For the rest, it doesn't tell me anything, because if in tennis you are No.1-seeded you know it's always better to face the No.24 than to face the No.8, or the No.12, because this is a ranking that is done for years. But now we are in a new format where some teams are high in the league table because they had a lucky draw, or some teams are low because they had a very difficult draw. It's far off to say that it is an advantage to be No.1 or No.2. We still don't know yet if that's an advantage or not. You might be lucky; you might be very unlucky and ending up as No.8 means that maybe you are lucky. So, for me, it doesn't tell me anything, what for me is the most important thing for tonight is that we've managed to skip a round and that is definitely worth a bit.
On the performance and effort from his team against Lille…
I am used to [it] from these players, what maybe today asked a bit more from them [is] that they had to be patient because the reason why Lille has done so well - 21 games unbeaten and the teams they've beaten in the Champions League - is, without any disrespect at all, they don't have the best players in the world, they have very good players, but they don't have the best players in the world and then to be able to do so well tells you how disciplined they are, how hard they want to work and how well the manager does over there.
We were not starting to force [anything] because they are really compact and defended really well. We didn't force a pass; we just kept the ball for as long as we could. The only thing I wasn't happy about is that not for the first time in recent weeks it was one chance for the other team and a goal, but that's maybe a phase of the season we are in at the moment.
On Salah becoming the first Liverpool player to score 50 goals in Europe...
Special is I think the word that describes most Mo's performance at this club the best. Maybe there are even better words to use, but he's been outstanding for this club for so many years and still he does [it]. Today [it was] a great goal. If Mo goes on a one-v-one there's a serious chance that he is going to score, but this goal we scored probably tells you a lot about why we are top of the league and why we are doing so well, because the work-rate from the players that won the ball back before Curtis [Jones] gave a great pass towards Mo, that tells you why we're doing so well.
On setting a club record in Europe for the longest spell without conceding…
Very pleased. Where I put everything down to first of all [is] the quality of the players, and second of all these quality players have an incredible work-rate. If you combine those two things, it's very difficult to score against the team. Apart from that, there were also games, I think when I look back at Girona, for example, they created quite a few chances. Alisson [Becker] was fantastic back then. The nice thing for me is that we keep clean sheets not by defending a lot, we keep clean sheets by attacking a lot. That makes it even nicer than if we were all the time in a low block kicking every ball away and don't take any risks in build-up and then keep a clean sheet. It's still nice. But I prefer it like this, and I think the fans prefer it like this as well.