ReactionPress conference: Arne Slot's verdict on defeat against Forest in full

After three successive wins to start the new Premier League season, the Reds fell to a loss at Anfield as Callum Hudson-Odoi’s second-half strike secured the points for Forest.

At his press conference following the final whistle, Slot delivered his verdict on what went wrong on the day and how his squad must respond ahead of a Champions League tie at AC Milan on Tuesday night.

See the head coach’s reaction in full below…

• Read our match report from Anfield

On how he saw today’s result and performance...

I think 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, so that is by far not enough if you have so much ball possession. If you play so much in their half, we need to do much better. We lost the ball so many times in simple situations. That is, I think, the main story from the game: ball possession not good enough.

On whether the international break was a factor...

It is always difficult to say this, but I don’t think it had anything to do with it. Players came back strong and I saw today also a team that wanted to fight until the end. So it had nothing to do with energy, in my opinion, but we simply had the ball a lot and we had to create from ball possession. If you look at the goals we have scored until now, we also scored quite a few from transition moments, from winning the ball back and then going to transition. But the other team played over our press a lot with a lot of long balls, so like I said, we got the ball mostly in our last line. Then it wasn’t good enough today because also too many individual performances in ball possession were not of the standards that I am used to from these players.

On whether he regards today as a setback ‘to the process’…

Not to the process, but it is a big setback. If you lose a home game it’s always a setback, especially if you face a team... we never know, maybe they will go all the way to fight for Champions League tickets, but normally this team is not ending up in the top 10, so if you lose a game against them that’s a big disappointment. Although, they were organised and structured really well today.

On how he will react to this situation…

I want to see the same attitude every single day: after a big win, after a small win, after a draw, after a loss. It is just to go out to work again tomorrow, analyse what we did well and what we didn’t do well. There were enough things we could improve from the Man United game, that’s also what we showed them. We showed them also a few good things, and that’s going to be the same tomorrow and the day after. But this is a different game than the ones we’ve played until now because we faced a low block, the team we faced played really low and as a result of that we had a lot of ball possession but we were not able to create a lot.

On the approach now to preparing for Tuesday’s Champions League game against AC Milan…

Like we prepare [for] all the other ones. It wouldn’t be good [if this defeat was an influence]. If I would change my way of preparation after a loss, that means I only do the best work I can after we lose. So, I always try to do the same, just the same as I expect from the players. They have to recover in the best possible way after a win and after a loss or a draw. And we will try to in the best possible way be prepared for Tuesday, which is going to be a completely different game but also a game where we will face a lot of quality.