Losing at home to Forest ‘a big setback’, says Liverpool boss Arne Slot

Liverpool head coach Arne Slot admits his first defeat – a shock 1-0 home loss to Nottingham Forest – is “a big setback”.

After three victories without conceding his side laboured for 72 minutes before Callum Hudson-Odoi’s strike secured the visitors’ first win at Anfield since 1969.

“It is a big setback. If you lose a home game that’s always a setback,” Slot said.

Defeat at Anfield. #LIVNFO pic.twitter.com/sZfIUDCvu4

— Liverpool FC (@LFC) September 14, 2024

“Normally this team isn’t ending up in top 10, so if you lose a game against them that’s a big disappointment, although they were organised and structured really well today.

“The only thing we had influence on was ball possession because they played a lot of long balls, so if you then take the ball back you need to go past 11 players.

“We had a lot of ball possession but only managed to create three or four quite good chances. That’s by far not enough.

“If you have so much possession and play so much in their half we need to be much better, we lost the ball so many times in simple situations.

“That’s the main story from the game – ball possession was not good enough.”

This was Slot’s first match after an international break and it appeared to show as passes went astray with alarming regularity, the connections built up previously becoming severed quite quickly.

Liverpool had 10 players who played the full 90 minutes in both games for their international teams and the likes of Alexis Mac Allister and Luis Diaz travelled back from South America.

However, that is not out of the ordinary and Slot did not look to find excuses.

“It’s always difficult, but I don’t think it had anything to do with it,” he added.

“Players came back strong and I saw today a team that wanted to