Arne Slot declares ‘ball possession not good enough’ after shock Liverpool loss

Liverpool head coach Arne Slot was not impressed with how his side used the ball during their 1-0 home loss to Nottingham Forest on Saturday.

Slot said that Liverpool were always going to have a lot of the ball but knew they would have to work hard to break down Forest.

He left Anfield disappointed as he saw his side surrender the ball in key moments and fail to be creative enough to get their noses in front.

Liverpool stunned

He felt that the number of chances that Liverpool generated considering their domination of possession was unacceptable.

Slot believes Liverpool should take away that simply having control of the ball is not enough.

“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,” Slot said after the match.

“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.”

No excuses from Liverpool boss

Slot refused to blame the international break for a lack of sharpness in attack from his side.

He was happy with the energy of his side and instead lamented their poor execution on the ball.

“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.”

Same effort

Slot doesn’t expect to see any change in his players after their first loss of the season and expects them to keep doing the work.

“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.”