Time and time again this season, Liverpool have lacked intensity, resulting in the Reds drifting in and out of games. Tellingly, it’s something that a previously supportive press pack are now calling Slot out on – much to his increasingly obvious irritation. Indeed, Slot was incensed by the suggestion that he had instructed his players to sit back after taking an early lead against Chelsea thanks to an unusually aggressive start.
“Yeah, I said it after we scored the 1-0 and then we got a big chance for the 2-0,” he said, sarcastically. “Didn’t you see me screaming off the sideline? ‘Go back, go back, defend your own box, defend your own box.’ Are you really serious?! Of course, it’s not the idea for us to back off.
“We wanted to keep going but we played against a team that got more and more comfortable on the ball. They didn’t have any wingers available, so they had a lot of midfielders, so they controlled the midfield and started to play and (were) passing through us more and more and more, which didn’t lead to a lot of chances but they were by far the dominant team in the game.
“It was difficult to change that during the first half but I think you might have noticed as well, apart from other things you’ve noticed, that at half-time we changed things.
“(It was) not perfect because they were still a few times able to play through us, but not as much as in the first half. That was the adjustment we made at half-time, which helped us being the more dominant team in the second half but not able to score. We were twice close.
“But I think it’s not fair to me that anyone could ever think that I tell my players to back off and to drop down and not to press them.
“Either you haven’t seen my teams playing last season and large parts of this season, let alone since I’m a manager. But it did look like that, that we dropped down, but that’s never the intention.”
The obvious question is, though, if it’s not the intention, why does it keep happening?
