Slot: 10th league defeat of season should hurt Liverpool a lot
Below is a summary of the full article. Click here for the full version from Sky Sports or go back to LFC Live.
Arne Slot says it is "not his job to come up with excuses" after Liverpool suffered their 10th defeat of the Premier League season, but highlighted his side’s injury problems, fixture pile-up and the players the club has sold.Danny Welbeck's double earned Brighton a 2-1 victory and inflicted another loss on Slot's side at the Amex Stadium on Saturday, just days after the Reds delivered their "best performance of the season" against Galatasaray in the Champions League. Get Sky Sports or stream with no contract on NOW 📺Saturday's defeat saw Liverpool miss the opportunity to climb above Aston Villa into fourth place.Slot admitted Brighton deserved to win but Liverpool's position was not good enough "no matter how many excuses I can come up with".
"What went wrong started off with the lead-up to this game, as so many times this season when we played a very good game and we thought we could bring that level to the first game or even better," he said. But in the second half Brighton were the better team on the pitch and they deserved to win."Brighton away, that's a difficult game for any team, especially if you miss out on a few very influential players," said Slot."Of course now, looking at the league table, this loss hurts a lot and it should hurt us a lot."But the main problem we are in this position (is) because we dropped points at Wolves in the last minute with a deflected shot (and then) a week ago (against Tottenham) - not a week ago, because we had to play on Sunday, not on Saturday, and then on Wednesday and Saturday, not as all the other Champions League teams."The goal last week in the 90th minute is a bigger problem than losing away at Brighton." Image: Danny Welbeck scores his second goal of the game to restore Brighton's lead against Liverpool Slot said Ekitike could "play tomorrow if he needed to", but blamed his injury on Liverpool's quick turnaround following the midweek fixture.He said: "If you face a team that has only had 62 hours of rest, the first thing you do is make it an intense game, play the first duels, play tough duels.
That I can also understand, because fans of other teams or certain pundits don't want to tell you that we've sold for £300m."Now, if the £150m player is never available, that's already one thing. He's the second goalkeeper."It makes complete sense if you win the league last season and you spent £150m, not £450m, that expectations are high.