Arne Slot discusses Liverpool’s Merseyside derby win.
Liverpool returned to action on Wednesday with a win against Everton in the Merseyside derby. After a deeply frustrating draw the last time these two teams met, the 1-0 victory at Anfield was a relief. The victory keeps them 12 points ahead in the race for the Premier League trophy.
Following the game, head coach Arne Slot made sure to give Diogo Jota the praise he deserved for his 57th minute goal.
“He was close to [scoring a goal] already in the first half; I think it was after seven or eight minutes,” Slot recalled. “It was not a surprise they blocked that shot because they are defensively an incredibly strong team. For him to come up in the second half, he had two of these moments as well and the other moment was blocked. But [for the goal] he found just a bit of space and he scored the goal, which was nice for him but nice for us – and by us, I mean his teammates, the staff and the fans.”
Despite the victory, fans were still angry at the referee not issuing a red card to James Tarkowski for a wild and dangerous tackle on Alexis Mac Allister. The referees seemed very sure of themselves, as it only took a matter of seconds for the VAR check to be completed.
While Slot declined to comment on the decision, he still managed to make his feelings on the subject known.
“Let me first say that I don’t want to comment about the situation because so many people already commented on that, even people that are not liking Liverpool a lot, and they were all so clear and obvious what the decision should have been. There’s no need for me to comment on that. Was I surprised? No,” he said.
The interesting choice to play Curtis Jones at right-back in place of the injured Trent Alexander-Arnold was the only real surprise in Slot’s line up. Slot said he made the decision pragmatically.
“…Three full-backs were injured: Trent Alexander-Arnold, Conor Bradley and Joe Gomez. Then it’s a choice of playing a centre-back over there. Jarell [Quansah] did quite OK in that position, to be fair, and he would have helped us with set-pieces. But I felt – we felt – that we had to play better with the ball than we did in the away game. It’s a risk to play a midfielder over there maybe. But I knew that he could help with his creativity in this position because that’s what you lack, of course, when Trent is not playing for you.”