A surging performance in the second-half saw Liverpool gain a point away at the City Ground.
Liverpool FC returned from the trip to Nottingham Forest with a hard-fought point. After going down a goal in the first half, the Reds managed to flip the script and were perhaps unlucky not to come away with all three points with a dominant second-half performance.
In his post-game comments, head coach Arne Slot offered up his thoughts on how the game went:
I couldn’t have asked for more today. I think most people talk about the second half – that they are really positive about the second half. If you ask me, I am also more positive about the second half than the first half, but if you play at this ground against this team, who are in such good form, hardly concedes a chance in every single game – and I have watched many of them back… so many counter-attack threats, almost every game they have counter-attack after counter-attack after counter-attack. We conceded only one counter-attack here today in 98 minutes of football of total domination. Unfortunately for us, that ball immediately went in.
Then in the second half, our ball possession also led to a lot of chances. You have to give credit, again, to Nottingham because the way they defend, they throw themselves in front of shots, in front of every cross and then there is a goalkeeper that has an outstanding season this year and tonight again. Being 1-0 down over here and it’s so hard to score against this team, it’s not what we wanted – we want to have three points, but in the end what I want, what the fans should want and what the players should want is that they give it all they [have] got during every single game they play. That is what they did today, combined with outstanding football in the second half.
He then flipped a question about potentially strengthening the squad in the transfer window on its head:
I think you saw today again that I can still strengthen the team or impact the game with the substitutes I have on the bench. Not for the first time this season, these players have helped us, that I could bring in. If you look at today, like I said, I couldn’t have asked for more. I said to them at half-time don’t get frustrated, you will not get many chances, probably the game is going to be slow, but just keep focusing on what you have to do and hopefully you will get two or three chances and let’s try to score from that. I was completely wrong because they created chance after chance after chance.
Two draws and a loss in our last four games might be worrying for some of the fanbase, but it feels like Liverpool definitely did do enough to win the game. There’s not a lot of time to regroup as the fixtures keep coming, but hopefully Liverpool will be able to play themselves into winning form again, especially with the two Champions League dead rubber matches.