Slot on Liverpool's 2-1 champions league win over Lille

NicheSportMedia

Slot on Liverpool's 2-1 champions league win over Lille  21.01.2025  Anfield, Liverpool, UK

Transcript

00:00Obviously, a refee new goal, I think 90 plus six minutes means that you haven't got a

00:29sealed top spot in the standings, but you are through to the last 16, so how much satisfaction

00:35do you take from that, from the performance, the work rate as well that got you seven wins

00:39from seven in the Champions League?

00:41Let's start with a compliment for the referee in Lisbon, because for the times I've worked

00:50in football, I saw four minutes of extra time and then there was three minutes of time delaying

00:54and then at four minutes the referee blew his whistle, but this referee kept on playing

00:57for a while, so maybe that was not in our advantage this time, but I like to see these

01:03things.

01:04For the rest, it doesn't tell me anything, because if in tennis you are number one seeded,

01:10you know it's always better to face the number 24 than to face the number eight or the number

01:1512, because this is a ranking that is done for years, but now we are in a new format

01:22where some teams are high in the league table because they had a lucky draw, or some teams

01:28are low because they had a very difficult draw.

01:30So it's far off to say that it's an advantage to be one or two, we still don't know yet

01:37if that's an advantage or not, you might be lucky, you might be very unlucky, and ending

01:41up eight can mean that you are maybe lucky.

01:46For me it doesn't tell me anything, what for me is the most important thing for tonight

01:49is that we've managed to skip a round, and that is definitely worth a bit.

01:55Performance and the work rate that you saw tonight?

01:58Like I'm used to from these players, what maybe today was asked a bit more from them

02:05is that they had to be patient, because the reason why Lille has done so well, 21 games

02:11unbeaten and the teams they've beaten in the Champions League, is without any disrespect

02:16at all, but they don't have the best players in the world, they have very good players,

02:20but they don't have the best players in the world, and then to be able to do so well tells

02:23you how disciplined they are, how hard they want to work, how well the manager does, they're

02:30over there.

02:33And we were not starting to force, because they are really compact and defended really

02:38well and we didn't force a pass, we just kept the ball for as long as we could.

02:42The only thing I wasn't happy about is that, not for the first time in recent weeks,

02:46it was one chance for the other team and a goal.

02:50But that's maybe the face of the season we are in at the moment.

02:55What more can you say about Mo Salah, the first Liverpool player to get to 50 goals in Europe?

03:01Special is the word that describes Mo's performance at this club the best,

03:10or maybe there are even better words to use, but he's been outstanding for this club for so many years,

03:15and still he does. Today, great goal, if Mo goes on a 1-1, there's a serious chance he's going to score,

03:24but this goal we scored probably tells you a lot about why we are top of the league and why we are doing so well,

03:30because the work rate from the players that won the ball back before Curtis gave the great pass to Mo,

03:37tells you also why we are doing really well.

03:40Can I just check, Curtis was an injury and all the other substitutions,

03:45Graeme Virtue, Bosley, Diaz, and Conor was more about managing workloads, was it?

03:49Yeah, the idea was to take Dom off and Ryan off at half-time,

03:55but Curtis unfortunately couldn't continue, so that's why Dom stayed a bit longer.

04:00And Conor, the idea was to play him 90, but in the end you could see

04:04that it got tougher and tougher for him in terms of loads,

04:08so you don't want to take the risk of him getting injured in the last few minutes,

04:12like it happened against Madrid.

04:15We wanted to win this game, but we were also aware of the fact that we had to manage the loads,

04:20because we would have been really, really unlucky if we had lost twice and still not been in the top eight,

04:26and as we know now, I think 18 points would have been enough to play in the top eight,

04:32but now with 21 there's no discussion anymore.

04:35Sorry?

04:37There was a moment in the game, what he felt, and he said,

04:43let's play for five more minutes and then let's see how it is.

04:47But he said he had to go off at half-time.

04:56Arne, you conceded a goal tonight, but before then you set a record

05:00for the longest Liverpool have gone in Europe without conceding.

05:03How pleased are you and what do you put that down to?

05:07Very pleased. Where I put everything down to, first of all, the quality of the players,

05:12second of all, these quality players have an incredible work rate.

05:15If you combine those two things it's very difficult to score against the team.

05:20Apart from that there were also games, I think when I look back at Girona for example,

05:25they created quite a bit of chances, Alisson was fantastic back then.

05:30So the nice thing for me is that we keep clean sheets, not by defending a lot,

05:37we keep clean sheets by attacking a lot.

05:41That makes it even more nice than if we are all the time in the low block,

05:46kicking every ball away, don't take any risk in build-up and then keep a clean sheet.

05:50Still nice, but I prefer it like this and I think the fans prefer it like this as well.

Category

Transcript

Recommended