ReactionArne Slot press conference: UCL win over Leipzig, Darwin Nunez's goal, club records and more
Arne Slot declared himself satisfied with Liverpool’s performance after they recorded a 1-0 win over RB Leipzig in the Champions League on Wednesday evening.
A Darwin Nunez goal in the first half settled a closely fought contest in Germany and ensured the Reds made it three victories from three games so far in the league phase of the tournament.
Indeed, it was an 11th win in 12 matches across all competitions for Slot since he assumed the role of head coach at Anfield in the summer.
Nevertheless, it was a difficult test at Red Bull Arena – with Caoimhin Kelleher required to make two late saves to see off the challenge of the hosts.
Read on to see everything Slot had to say in his post-match press conference in Leipzig.
On whether the final scoreline could have been more comfortable…
Yeah. I don’t think we started the game really well in the first 10 or 15 minutes, but after that I liked a lot what I saw. Many, many, many times we played through their press, opened up their midfield and went for an attack. That led to the first goal, that led to a few chances – more than a few and then in the end it’s a pity that you still need your two centre-backs to play such a big game and your goalkeeper to make two such important saves because a game like this should have been ours after 60, 70 minutes and it wasn’t. That’s why the last 20 were still difficult for us.
On whether the nature of Nunez’s goal was particularly pleasing…
I’m always happy when we score a goal and I’m not that much into it who scores it. It is always good to see all of our players scoring goals and I think in the lead-up to the goal, Cody [Gakpo] and Mo [Salah] were just as important in the goal as Darwin was. What I liked from Darwin was that he was also strong, comfortable on the ball, kept the ball a lot, fighting if he had to defend, so he made it a really difficult game for the two centre-backs of Leipzig. And then for him scoring, I think that is always nice for a striker to be on the scoresheet.
On whether he was concerned that Liverpool ‘did not dominate’ the match…
You were not inside the stadium? You thought we didn’t dominate? If you play good teams and if you play a pot one team in an away game, there will always be moments in the game that the other team has some moments as well and I think one of them was from a corner kick. The way I looked at this game was that we had, for large parts of the game, total dominance like in all the other games we played except for the one against Chelsea.
So, I am not worried at all about this game, I was a bit more worried, if you want to call it like this, after the Chelsea game. But this is how I like to see our team play: much more chances than the other team, much more ball possession, much more time freeing up the midfield from build-up. So, that was good but I agree with you that if you were only there for the first 10 and the last 20 [minutes] that there were also difficult phases in the game. But that, at this level, is what happens in football.
On whether his decision to substitute Mohamed Salah in the second half was with Sunday’s game at Arsenal in mind…
Also it’s a tough fixture list that we have so, I said before the game about Curtis Jones that he hasn’t played 90 minutes yet, he only played two times 75 or 85 minutes, he is not used to playing two games so fast in a row. We have some injuries now so I have to take good care of the players that have played a lot and Mo is one of them and on Sunday a big game is coming up again. So, I need to use as many players as I can use for these next tough weeks and these tough months that are coming up, so that they are all prepared to play.
On setting more records with another victory…
Yeah, I think I said it before with the other – not that we had so many records but we did a few – records that I should, we should, be proud because so many great teams have worn this shirt, so many great managers have been at this club. So, if you can achieve something that hasn’t been achieved before it is almost impossible at a big club like this and to achieve it is always nice. But I said it also about the other records: records are nice but there is something else that is more nice than records and we both know what I mean I think – that’s trophies.
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