Arne Slot, Liverpool's manager, spoke out after leading the team to an away victory over Marseille in the latest UEFA Champions League match.
Arne Slot, the manager of the "Reds" Liverpool, said he was very pleased with his team's performance and deserved the 3-0 away win against Olympique Marseille in the UEFA Champions League group stage last night. He also gave special praise to Mohamed Salah and Joe Gomez.
Slot said, "Visiting here was always going to be a tough game, due to their fans, players, and manager. We had to play very well today, and we did. We were very efficient, scoring three goals. Everyone will feel better than when we created five chances but only scored once. Today, we deserved this result. We weren't unlucky like in many games this season."
"Previously, I understood why our performances were inconsistent, mostly because of open games. This is completely different from playing against teams that defend deeply. You can’t compare tonight’s game because both teams wanted to press and play from the back. If we were inconsistent, it was because we had trouble dealing with deep-lying defenses."
Regarding the chance to avoid the two-legged playoff round, he said, "Everyone has seen the kind of squad we have. We have three injured players and a smaller squad compared to our rivals. So, it's very important that we avoid playing those matches."
Praising Salah and Gomez, Slot said, "It’s good that Salah has been with us a long time. He knows his teammates and understands how we want to play. It shows his professionalism. He was fit enough to play 90 minutes today. He nearly scored from a good pass by Cody, which normally would be a goal for him, but tonight it wasn’t. However, it didn’t hurt us because we scored three goals. Overall, I saw many very good individual performances, as we saw against Arsenal, Burnley, and tonight."
"The player I want to highlight most is Joe Gomez. He hasn’t played much in the past year and a half. Sometimes he was injured, other times I didn’t play him even though he was fit. But in the few games he played, he played an important role in the League Cup and FA Cup. Tonight, he performed excellently and was a key part of our 3-0 win."
This victory increased Liverpool’s points to 15, moving them up to 4th place in the group standings, keeping their hopes alive to be among the top eight to automatically advance to the round of 16.