Beth Lindop
Multiple Authors
BRIGHTON, England — Arne Slot has said Liverpool’s 2-1 defeat to Brighton & Hove Albion “hurts a lot” and admitted his team’s form this season has not been good enough.
Danny Welbeck struck twice at the Amex to secure all three points for the hosts, dealing Liverpool a huge blow in the race for Champions League qualification.
“Of course now looking at the league table, this loss hurts a lot and it should hurt us a lot,” Slot said. “But the main problem is that we are in this position because we dropped a point at Wolves in the last minute from a deflected shot. That [Tottenham] goal last week in the 90th minute is, I would say, even a bigger problem than losing away at Brighton.”
Liverpool were without both Mohamed Salah and Alisson Becker for their trip to the south coast, while Hugo Ekitike was substituted with an injury early in the first half.
Asked whether he expects outsiders to have sympathy with his team considering the £450million ($602m) they spent in last summer’s transfer window, Slot said: “No, I have complete sympathy with that for all the people who are saying this because no one in England is used to the fact that there are also clubs that are selling players.
“So usually in England when a club is buying £450 million like we did, that’s adding that to the already great team you are having.
“But this club has a different model and no one wants to see that and no one wants to understand this, that I can also understand because fans of other teams and certain pundits don’t want to tell you that we sold for £300million ($401m).
“Then, the £150 million ($201m) player is never available. That’s already one thing, and Giovanni Leoni has never been available because of his injury. That’s already the second thing, and now we’re already going underneath what we’ve sold. Jeremie Frimpong is recently much more available and Mamardashvili was one of the signings, the second goalkeeper.
“But, yes, it makes complete sense if you win the league last season and you spent £450 million that the expectations are high, and those expectations were high for the pundits, for the media, for me, for the fans. At our club we’re also looking at the situation and the challenge we had during this season, and then we might be a bit more realistic, why the season has gone why it is gone. But still it’s not good enough no matter how much excuses I can come up with, it’s still not good enough for the position you’re in right now.
Asked for an update on Liverpool’s absentees, Slot added: “Alisson definitely out during international break. Hugo could play tomorrow if he needed to. It was a dead leg.
– Danny Welbeck scores twice as Brighton beat Liverpool
– Alisson withdraws from Brazil squad due to injury
“Brighton did what we expected, if you face a team that has only had 62 hours of rest. The first thing they did was make it an intense game. There was nothing wrong with the duels but unfortunately there was a collision and that led to Hugo going out.
“After two minutes, dealing without Mohamed Salah, Alexander Isak and Hugo… we have to find a way of playing players in positions they’re not used to. We did this quite well in the first half but as the game on, Brighton became stronger and stronger.
“Throughout the second half, they were closer to 3-1 than we were to making it 2-2.”
Leave a Reply