Slot delighted with debut Liverpool win and claims they will get better
Slot delighted with debut Liverpool win and claims they will get better
17/08/2024
Portman Road Stadium, Ipswich, UK
17/08/2024
Portman Road Stadium, Ipswich, UK
Transcript
00:00I'll go in the middle, then.
00:08Familiar faces.
00:12Some long car journeys.
00:14Yeah.
00:18New season, new glasses.
00:19Nice.
00:20Hello, Arnaut.
00:22What did you make of your first Premier League game,
00:25and a very good second half performance,
00:27but you made a big change at half-time.
00:30We as a team made a big change at half-time,
00:32because we came out totally different than the first half.
00:35But I have to give credit to Ipswich as well,
00:38because I think they were aggressive,
00:40they were not afraid,
00:41they were playing all over the pitch,
00:43one-v-one, to defend us.
00:45And then it's about winning your jewels
00:47and winning your second balls,
00:49and I think they won more than us,
00:51and that's why it was absolutely an equal game in the first half.
00:55But in the second half we won more jewels,
00:58we won more second balls,
01:00and we played more balls in behind,
01:02because if the other team takes the risk of playing one-v-one
01:06and you have the likes of Luis Diaz, Mo Salah and Diogo Jota,
01:10then use them, play the balls in behind.
01:13That's what we did better in the second half,
01:15and from there on the gaps opened up
01:17and you could see also how good and well we could play in ball possession.
01:22Mo Salah's got this record now,
01:25no-one has scored more goals than he has in the Metro.
01:28OK.
01:29It's hard to think he's going to be out of contract at the end of the season,
01:32he looks like he could play another four or five years at this level.
01:36If I see what he does to keep his body as it is
01:39and to be ready to play every game,
01:41I think there are many more years inside of him to play.
01:45But if you're OK with it, I'm looking now at Brentford,
01:48and not at the end of the season.
01:52You seem to suggest in your quotes to TV
01:55that you were unhappy with the balls your team were losing in the first half.
02:00Were you quite forceful at half-time in the message you delivered to the players?
02:05Not so much that we lost the balls too much,
02:08I think we lost far too many jewels.
02:10They were very aggressive, that also led to three yellow cards,
02:16but in a good way aggressive.
02:19We didn't cope with that well enough in my opinion,
02:22so that's what I said to them at half-time,
02:24if you want to win over here you need to go a step up
02:27in terms of winning your jewels first and make it a fight out of it
02:31instead of accepting that every time we play a ball long
02:34that the ball ends up in our 16 again.
02:38It helped us I think as well that Ibu Konate came in
02:43because he from the start won his jewels from number nine.
02:47That gave us also a lot of ball possession
02:51and that led to two goals, which we could have scored a few more now.
02:56There's been a lot of talk about the defensive midfield position,
02:59but I thought Brian was excellent in that today.
03:02What did you make of him in that position today?
03:05For me it's always about the team,
03:07so if an individual performance is really good
03:09that is because the team does really well.
03:11Everybody is emphasising on the goal Mo scored
03:14and the assist he had,
03:16but both goals were from a build-up situation
03:19where we started one time with Virgil
03:22and the other time I think even with Alisson.
03:24So we need to make sure that these players,
03:27the attackers, come in promising positions
03:29and the team needs to help them for that.
03:31It's the same with Ryan, of course Ryan is attacking-minded,
03:35but if we play with him,
03:39the rest of the team needs to help him as well,
03:42so it takes a lot of effort for the attackers
03:45and for the attacking midfielders to help him there.
03:48But what we do know with Ryan is that he can play the ball forward
03:51if he sees options to do so,
03:53so that helped us today, especially in the second half.
03:57On a personal level, what was your overall first impression
04:00of the Premier League experience this week,
04:03right up until arriving in Ipswich and going through the game?
04:09When I started here there were many things that have been told to me,
04:13but one of them was that Jurgen hated the 12.30 kick-off,
04:16and today the team showed that we hated the 12.30 kick-off
04:20because we were not in the game in the first half.
04:23And the second thing people told me
04:25is that there are no easy games in the Premier League,
04:27and we showed that today.
04:29If you play against a newly promoted team
04:31and they can make such a fight out of it as they did in the first half,
04:34they can make it so difficult for us,
04:37then there's probably a lot more to come,
04:39and that's why it's also important for us to have weeks like the upcoming ones
04:42where we can work with the team to prepare them even better
04:45than we prepared them today,
04:47because the first half was not good enough,
04:49the second half was a real good performance.
04:54Just to get on Ryan Graven,
04:56when you say he's a defensive player,
04:58when you're maybe in games where you need him to defend a bit more,
05:02what additional qualities are you looking for from him
05:04to enable him to stay in that position?
05:07Defending we do with XI, we don't do this with one player.
05:11So we need to help him, as all the others,
05:17in the position where he's playing in or where anyone else is playing in.
05:20So it's not that only Virgil and Ibu or only Virgil and Joel are defending,
05:24the whole team have to do so.
05:26If we defend with XI, that would help Ryan or whoever is playing there a lot,
05:32because last season Maka played there a lot
05:34and I think he has certain qualities that Ryan has as well.
05:38I think if you look at both players,
05:40the first thing you think of is with the ball, in ball possession.
05:44That's why we as a team have to make sure
05:48that whoever is playing in that position is not too exposed,
05:52and that's what happened today,
05:55because I think the team really helped to defend in the best possible way
06:00and because of that Ryan had a good performance.
06:05Hi Arne, it's going to be a process for you to impose your football on this team,
06:10but I just wondered how close that impressive second half was
06:13to what you want to see for the rest of the season?
06:17Yeah, I don't think for the Liverpool supporters
06:20it's the first time in nine years that they saw the team playing really well.
06:23I inherited a very, very good team with a lot of great individuals,
06:27but also these players have to understand
06:30that it's not enough what they brought in the first half,
06:33and if they bring the maximum of their capacity
06:38then they can play really, really good,
06:41and that's what they showed in the second half today.
06:44But it was good to see the goals we scored,
06:50but I think the attack that would probably be a match of the day tonight as well,
06:55that didn't lead to a goal, was the nicest one,
06:58and that was the one Lucio just hit over the bar.
07:02That was a way I want to see the team doing more and more if they can.
07:11The goals came from balls in behind to Salah,
07:14and even in the first half that seemed like a clear route to goal.
07:17Was that something you'd worked on beforehand,
07:19and was there anything about that switch that meant that was such a clear route to goal?
07:24The way the other team defends, there we have to find our answer.
07:28Today Ipswich took the risk to play one-v-one all over the pitch,
07:32so their centre-back always stepped in towards Dominic Subbersly.
07:36That means that you leave three defenders against three strikers,
07:39three of our attackers.
07:41Then we need to recognise those moments
07:44and make sure we bring those three players in dangerous situations,
07:48and that's then not to keep playing short,
07:52we have to find them with direct passes or passes in behind.
07:56That led to the fact that they didn't take that risk anymore,
08:00and from that moment on we had a lot of time to play and to do our build-up,
08:04which you saw in the end of the second half.
08:08We have to recognise how the other team is defending,
08:12and then we have to find our answer.
08:14That's what we did really well in the second half.
08:23Make sure you have the red one.
08:25The red one, yeah.