Arne Slot explains emotions after late Liverpool win and 'worst' 45 minutes of his reign

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Liverpool Echo IconSportFootballLiverpool FCArne Slot reflects on Liverpool's 1-0 injury-time Premier League victory over Nottingham Forest at the City GroundArne Slot believes Liverpool turned in the "worst first half" of his time in charge as they left it late to secure a 1-0 win at Nottingham Forest. Having been denied by a VAR check for handball only moments earlier, Alexis Mac Allister scored in the 97th minute to seal a huge victory for the visiting side in their efforts to secure Champions League qualification.The Premier League champions, however, were second best for large spells at the City Ground, particularly the first period, when the hosts had 12 shots and were the team who looked most likely to make the breakthrough.And Slot opened up on his frustrations with the opening 45 minutes and explained how he felt when Mac Allister converted a stoppage-time winner to move them level on with fourth-placed Chelsea on 45 points.READ MORE: Arne Slot gives Florian Wirtz injury update after Liverpool star's late pull out"The worst first half we played but we have defended our box really well, that was why it was still 0-0, as much as Forest played well," the Reds boss said."We have to defend a lot of set-pieces so if we brought that mentality to the whole pitch and not lose almost every ball you touch.

I pointed our second half against Manchester City as well."Ensure our latest sport headlines always appear at the top of your Google Search by making us a Preferred Source. This is probably the first time I have to do a different post-match press conference than I did throughout all these other games because we did not play a good game, the performance, especially first half, was not as good as others."And we have been on the wrong end of the score when we have played well too many times.

So I think we got more than we deserved and a draw would have been a fair result for this game rather than us winning it."But then you think you have won it because Hugo Ekitike already has a great chance from Rio Ngumoha's cross, he misses it, the ball comes back, goes into the net and since VAR is there I always struggle to celebrate too much if I think there might be something there [to check]."You never know if a ball has hit the body and where it ended up and apparently it ended up on his arm. So my emotion is still not everything that happens against us this season."Again two or three minutes later we think we scored the winner, and then the referee points at the kick off and win it."FOLLOW OUR LIVERPOOL FC FACEBOOK PAGE!