Ian Doyle looks ahead to Liverpool’s Champions League home clash with PSV – a match under-pressure head coach Arne Slot could do with winning
Liverpool head coach Arne Slot at the pre-PSV pre-conference at Anfield on Tuesday afternoon(Image: ANP via Getty Images)
When Liverpool last locked horns with PSV Eindhoven back in January, defeat was seen as a minor inconvenience for a team sweeping all before them both home and abroad. Less than 10 months later, and a very different landscape means a repeat of that setback and the pressure would crank up even further on beleaguered Reds boss Arne Slot.
A sixth defeat in seven Premier League games – and eight loss in 11 in all competitions – with the dire 3-0 reverse at home to Nottingham Forest on Saturday evening further intensified the scrutiny on Slot, with some whispers a change in the dugout may be required.
The Liverpool hierarchy, having seen their bold call in appointing the Dutchman as successor to Jurgen Klopp rewarded with a Premier League title in his debut season, aren’t anywhere near considering such drastic action.
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But having sanctioned a near-£450million spending spree in the summer, Fenway Sports Group would not have expected to see the Reds floundering in the bottom half of the table behind neighbours Everton almost a third into the season.
In some respects, that defeat for an understrength team in Holland at the start of the new year marked the end of the beginning for Liverpool under Slot.
While only the third defeat in the 35th game of this tenure, it was, similar to the first leg of the League Cup semi-final at Tottenham Hotspur earlier in the month, ultimately irrelevant given the Reds ended up finishing top of the new-look opening Champions League phase.
That, though, led to the dubious reward of a round-of-16 clash that was lost on penalties to in-form eventual competition winners Paris Saint-Germain just five days before League Cup final defeat to Newcastle United. By then, another much-changed side were humbled in the FA Cup at a Plymouth Argyle team who ended up dropping into League One.
Before the loss at PSV, Liverpool had won 27 of 34 games under Slot. Including that match, the record has since been 21 victories in 41.
The Reds boss, though, is more concerned by the immediate rather than bigger picture as he aims to this evening overcome old rivals PSV, who are clear at the top of the Eredivisie in the defence of their title but have won just one of their four Champions League games thus far.
And Slot had a mixed response to suggestions he may have to drastically alter his gameplan and personnel to kickstart his spluttering side.
“No and yes,” he said. “No because I don’t think you have to do anything completely different, that wouldn’t be right to us and the players.
“But a little bit yes, because if you’re a fan of the Premier League, it’s going in a different way, you see a different way of playing. That maybe means we have to change a few details in how you play.
“You have to have a certain physicality especially in terms of height. But that’s not an excuse that we aren’t so tall and we’ve conceded so many goals from dead-ball moments.
“But we have to help ourselves defensively a bit more – I’m not talking the last line, I am talking about the whole team because then maybe people will also see on the ball we are not doing so many things differently from last season but the amount of goals we are conceding is the big difference between this and last season.”
While Liverpool have leaked only four goals in as many games in the Champions League, they have shipped 20 in 12 in the Premier League – their worst such record at this stage of a season since 1992.
And while Slot admits set-pieces are an ongoing major issue, conversely they have made a positive difference for Liverpool in Europe, providing winners at home to Atletico Madrid and Real Madrid and allowing them to pull away when strolling to victory at Eintracht Frankfurt.
“Last season we conceded zero set-pieces up to now, now we have conceded nine,” he said.
“The amount of goals we have conceded and the amount of goals coming from set-pieces is, again, close to ridiculous for a club like us.
“Of course there are probably more details that are different but the biggest one is the goals we concede because from open play we are still able to generate enough chances for us to get a result.”
