Liverpool went into their match with Arsenal on Sunday in the ninth week of the 2024/25 Premier League season with a chance at the top of the table, but a draw at the Emirates ensured that they remained second as Manchester City climbed to first following their win on Saturday.
This prompted journalists and broadcasters to start talking about Slot’s title chances after just nine weeks, leading to questions on the topic from the media to the media in the mixed zone after the match.
Slot offered a quick answer that shut down those talks while speaking on other facets of the game which he had opinions for the media on.
“I know you guys like to talk about title contenders, that’s part of your job,” Slot began. “Can you get a result in a difficult away game as this one? The way we did it pleased me a lot. The way we can compete with such a strong Arsenal team in their stadium is pleasing to see. But where that ends up leading to, I can’t say.”
Slot then spoke on how he was able to motivate his team at halftime as they were a goal down going into the second half.
“The thing is if you face Arsenal with a manager that is working here for four or five years and he has done an incredible job here because his team can play in so many different set-ups. They always play 4-3-3, but the way they position themselves they can do – I think he said it once himself – 40 different set-ups.
“I don’t know what he exactly said, but it is many different set-ups. So, you prepare a game plan, you expect something but you cannot tell your players 40 different options, so you try to prepare them in the best possible way.
“Now they play with a false nine, which they do maybe more often, but they didn’t come that many times with a full-back inside. We could prepare them at half-time a bit better from what we saw in the first half; we took some more risk, but I think the main thing was we just put more energy into it.
“We pressed them more aggressive from the start and I saw that we also keep going where they had to take a few of their quality players off as well because they couldn’t go on and maybe that helped us in the end a bit as well.”
Slot was also captured spilling expletives during the game about Arsenal’s shenanigans in the match which he believed were time wasting tactics and unsportsmanlike of the Gunners.
He was incensed in the game and was shown a yellow card during a rant, which he revealed was aimed at his defender Ibrahima Konate and not the referees, as was the initial thought.
About the incident, Slot said: “I said after there were so many times that they were on the floor, which can happen so many times in football. I don’t blame them for that but it always happened after they had ball possession. That took the energy out of the game in my opinion.
“So I said to Ibou ‘this is a f***ing joke’ and the fourth official thought i said to him ‘you are a f***ing joke; but that’s definitely not what I said. But I got a yellow for that and now I’m on two and I have to be careful now.”
