‘This felt to me the right decision’: Slot defends Liverpool selection for Palace tie

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Arne Slot said he had no regrets over fielding a weakened Carabao Cup team against Crystal Palace and accepted he is under pressure as Liverpool succumbed to a sixth defeat in seven games.Oliver Glasner’s side beat Liverpool for the third time this season to advance into the quarter-finals thanks to two goals from Ismaïla Sarr and a first Palace goal from Yéremy Pino. “It’s always a blow to lose a game, especially when it leads to going out of a competition, but it’s the same selection I did tonight that I did last season in these rounds,” said the head coach, who hopes to have Ryan Gravenberch back from injury on Saturday.“There are many reasons why we’ve lost six out of seven, none of them are good enough to accept ­losing so many.

Our ­performance against Brentford, two days after we played Frankfurt away, I saw a team that struggled with ­playing three games in seven days.“In two days we play Villa and the last time I played a player I thought was ready for that programme was Alexander Isak, but it turns out he wasn’t and went out with an injury. With our starters we haven’t been able to beat Palace as well.”Slot admitted he was under pressure to arrest Liverpool’s slump before the Carabao Cup exit.

He added: “I don’t think it’s possible that if you lose five out of six, that losing six out of seven there is even more pressure. I don’t think it has changed much after this loss.”