Arne Slot addresses Ibrahima Konate and Mohamed Salah Liverpool form - 'So much focus'

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Liverpool Echo IconSportFootballLiverpool FCLiverpool head coach Arne Slot was asked about Ibrahima Konate and Mohamed Salah at his Liverpool press conference to preview the trip to ChelseaArne Slot believes Ibrahima Konate is paying the price for Liverpool's recent poor results as scrutiny grows over the form of the centre-back. Konate was below par in both last weekend's 2-1 Premier League defeat at Crystal Palace and the 1-0 Champions League reverse in Istanbul against Galatasaray on Tuesday.The France international made a number of unforced errors including one in midweek that led to an opportunity for home striker Victor Osimhen from which Alisson Becker suffered a hamstring injury while racing back to save.But Slot has pointed out Konate hasn't been the only player guilty of such avoidable mistakes over the past week.READ MORE: Arne Slot confirms major Liverpool injury blow amid Hugo Ekitike fitness updateREAD MORE: Arne Slot missing key Liverpool partnership that can unlock Florian Wirtz from struggles"If you lose like we did versus Galatasaray and Palace it doesn't help if you lose the ball easily," said the Reds boss."He (Konate) has been one of them, definitely not the only one because against Galatasaray, apart from penalty, maybe they got three of four moments from us losing simple balls without any pressure, which happened to him once in the Crystal Palace game and Galatasaray."If you lose a game football, there is so much focus on that moment and, all of sudden, 90 minutes have been very poor and that’s not what I analyse game one more time and see what we did well and wrong."In the last two games, it has been obvious and clear we have made a few errors, not only him but others we are not used to."(If you) do things people are not used to and lose a game of football then normally the manager gets criticism."The form of Mohamed Salah has also been questioned with the Egyptian dropped to the bench by Slot in Turkey after also posting a poor display at Palace.While Salah has three goals and three assists in nine games this season, the forward has been inconsistent as Liverpool adapt to a new-look forward line.But Slot said: "I see the same as the second part of last season, 13 goals, five from a penalty, one from a set-piece.

He is part of a team that faces different opposition from the first half of last season."If you compare how we won the away game against Man Utd when they tried to play out from the back we took the ball from them three times and scored and the game at Anfield when (Andre) Onana only went long,"We don’t score as many open play goals as we did in the first part of last season."This is something we work on very hard and the more we will play together in the new set-up the better we will go but we still struggle to find enough goals from open play."