Liverpool boss Arne Slot on changes for Brighton premier league clash after beating them 3-2 in League Cup in midweek
01/11/2024
AXA training centre, Liverpool, Uk
01/11/2024
AXA training centre, Liverpool, Uk
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00:00Yes, warm-ups are done.
00:11I'll check on injury news first of all.
00:14Alisson Jota there, of course, to be ready straight after the international break,
00:18so will he be ready for Southampton away?
00:20And any further update on Chiesa and when he might be available to you as well?
00:23Yeah, I think I said it already a few times,
00:27it's always difficult to exactly tell you when they are ready,
00:33because especially the last phase of the recovery can always be a few days extra or less.
00:39So the fact is that they are not there before the international break
00:44and let's see if they can join us after.
00:46Chiesa will be gone?
00:48Chiesa is not back before the international break,
00:53but that's only a week to go, so we're hoping that he can do things again
00:58during the international break and that he can join us afterwards.
01:01It's been a couple of weeks, so I'm going to ask the contract question a little bit differently today.
01:04After Chelsea Virgil said that discussions are ongoing regarding his contract,
01:09and after the Arsenal game he said,
01:11let's see what happens towards the end of the season.
01:13So when does the contract situation become a problem in terms of your planning for next season?
01:19For me the contract situation could become a problem
01:22if the players don't perform as well as they do at the moment.
01:26Although, of course, then it's also not sure that if they perform not as good anymore
01:33that that has anything to do with their contract situation.
01:36At the moment all three of them are in a good place,
01:38they all perform really, really well,
01:41and there are ongoing discussions between what Virgil said to people he had to talk with.
01:47And that's not me, as you know. I talk to him about other things.
01:52Yeah, let's wait and see, but I think all what he says he's completely right in that
01:59he doesn't exactly know what he chooses to bring as long as he doesn't sign the contract.
02:03And no further update, obviously.
02:05Not from my side, no.
02:07Have you learned anything more about your squad this season?
02:10The way you've been able to rotate, you're through to the next round of the FL Cup,
02:14you've got a 100 per cent record in the Champions League as well,
02:17and you're only just off top spot in the Premier League.
02:19What have you learned about its ability to challenge on all four fronts?
02:23I think you learn every day, especially if you are not as long with the team as I am.
02:31So then you learn every day from new situations,
02:35and I said before the Chelsea game was something I learned from them,
02:39that they could sit deep and defend the lead.
02:44The way they came back against Arsenal was really strong,
02:47and the amount of games we have to play that they are still able to be available
02:51and play good football, that is also something you see.
02:54And then we also saw during the week that players that haven't played that much
03:00maybe have an impact on our team as well, and we will need them during the whole season.
03:06So it's good to see that they are already on a level they need to play for us.
03:12Does it feel strange to be playing Brighton again so quickly after just a few days ago?
03:16Does that affect your preparation at all in terms of how you look at this game?
03:19No, it's not that strange for us in football,
03:22because in the older Champions League or Europa League world,
03:27you faced mostly, especially if it went to play-offs,
03:32you faced the team after a week again.
03:36So in football we are used to playing the same team maybe after a few days.
03:41So it's not weird, especially because both teams didn't start with the team
03:46they will start with on Saturday,
03:49and I think for both managers it's a positive thing,
03:52because you know even more about the opponent.
03:54Although, like I just said, players make the game,
03:58and it's of course a difference if a different player plays.
04:04The playing style might be the same, but the qualities of the players make nine or ten times the difference.
04:08So that changes the game on Saturday, of course, compared to the one on Wednesday.
04:15In terms of the managers, having seen Hürzler and what he's done so far,
04:20a lot's been made about the fact that he's so young.
04:22Does that make any difference, do you think?
04:25Obviously if you've got experience it can be a big help,
04:27but do you go with the old saying that if you are good enough, you are old enough?
04:31Yeah, I think that is also definitely true with players.
04:35Some managers maybe need the first 20 years of experience to come to this level,
04:42they need this, and some talents.
04:45It's also the same with players, and this can be with managers as well.
04:48They just have it in their fingers, is that a saying you have here as well?
04:53Probably not.
04:55That's a new one for us!
04:58He's probably one of them because he's done really well at his former club
05:04and he's done really well till now here in England also.
05:08For him, experience is probably not such a big thing.
05:12Maybe I had a bit the same, I think I had one hour of experience before I joined Feyenoord.
05:18There are exceptions, but in general I think it's also good to have some experience,
05:23but there are exceptions to that rule.
05:26Arne, injuries deprived you of two key players in terms of forwards
05:33on Wednesday night in Jota and Chiesa,
05:37you left Salah and Nunez on the bench,
05:40what impressed you most about your front play,
05:43given you scored three goals, you created a lot of chances,
05:46and how can that inform your thinking moving forward maybe?
05:52The good thing was that when you look at our front line,
05:56we could play two of our regular starters with Cody Kakpo and Lucio Deas,
06:01and they had a big impact on the score sheet, of course.
06:05The way we filled in the number 9 position was interesting to see,
06:10because I think it worked out really well.
06:14But in the end, I prefer to play with a real number 9,
06:19but it is maybe now an extra possibility that we have if we have injuries.
06:24Although maybe with Djokovic, who is also a bit of a 9.5,
06:29we implemented that style already.
06:33But to play with Curtis and Dom, those are definitely midfielders with Djokovic,
06:38Djokovic is a striker.
06:40So it was good to see that we could score three goals
06:44even without playing with an old-fashioned number 9.
06:48If you look at what Brighton have achieved over the last 10 or 15 years,
06:52it's one of the great footballing stories, really,
06:55and in more recent years their recruitment policy has been a beacon
07:01for lots of other teams to try and follow.
07:04What makes them such a threat on matchday,
07:08because they're so positive in their footballing outlook,
07:12whoever the manager is, whatever the players they have,
07:17they can cause problems for the very best teams.
07:21Yeah. I wouldn't say whoever the manager is...
07:24But if you look at the managers that have come and gone,
07:27they keep on replacing them with managers that have gone to achieve...
07:32Yeah, the last three of them were impressive,
07:36but that is not whoever the manager is,
07:40all three of them are really good managers.
07:44And especially in the last two and a half years,
07:47and I said this before the game as well,
07:50sometimes you tend to forget these things because it's not such a big club,
07:54we only talk here a lot about the spending of especially Chelsea and United,
08:00but I saw the stats when Erik left the club,
08:04how much in this two and a half years he had spent,
08:07but you were on the same list.
08:09I saw that Brighton was only 10 to 15 million underneath us,
08:13the both of us were just on the sheet.
08:17So that also tells you that it's not that strange that they do so well,
08:22they've sold for a lot of money, but they've also bought for a lot of money.
08:26And if you add towards three very good managers,
08:30it's for me not a surprise that they do so well for so many years now.
08:36Hi, Arne. I wanted to ask you about something you said with Sander Vesterveld in an interview,
08:42where you talk about trying to inject energy and confidence into the training sessions.
08:47Obviously in a time like this where it's really an intense period of time,
08:50where you maybe don't have as much time on the training pitch because of travel and recovery,
08:54how important are the players in terms of trying to reinforce that message?
08:58I think particularly in the instance of Gerrard Gwanza,
09:01who obviously didn't have the kind of game that he'd have liked against Brighton,
09:04and may not necessarily get a chance to get on the pitch again for quite some time,
09:08how important is the leaders, the Joe Gomez, the Virgil van Dijk,
09:11helping to inject that confidence back into him?
09:16They are important, as every team-mate is important for every player,
09:21but I don't agree with everything you said, so mostly we agree,
09:27but this time I think Gerrard played a very good game.
09:31The only issue he has at the moment is that if he has a moment that is not perfect,
09:37it immediately leads to a goal, that's what happened in this game.
09:42He was, in my opinion, unlucky, and I know you cannot judge a player
09:47on leaving those two moments out because they are so vital for results,
09:51but he is getting better and better and better, and he was already really good.
09:58So for him it's that last step maybe to make,
10:04which you've already shown in the past, that he can play a game without making a small mistake.
10:09So he's a bit in an unlucky period when it comes to if he makes a small mistake,
10:14it immediately leads to a goal, but if I look at his overall performance,
10:18I really liked what I saw, he was confident on the ball,
10:21also when we conceded that one it was not out of,
10:25oh, I'm afraid to make a decision, it's just by taking initiative,
10:29and these things can happen, in my opinion.
10:32I liked the way he played, and like I said, he was a bit unlucky with the second goal as well,
10:40but for me that was not his game.
10:44So I wouldn't say he is not able to play in the upcoming days or weeks,
10:48he is definitely in competition with two centre-backs
10:53that are hardly making any mistakes at the moment,
10:56but apart from the mistakes, I think he played similar to Virgil and Ibu,
11:02with a lot of confidence, playing the ball out from the back, defending really well.
11:06So for me it was a good performance, but a bit unlucky in the end.
11:11Liverpool has always been such an information- and analysis-driven club,
11:16can you talk about how receiving that information has maybe helped your transition here,
11:21and then specifically in the instance of playing the same club twice in a row,
11:26is there an advantage because you are getting this analysis
11:30maybe more than you would somewhere else?
11:34That last thing, I don't know.
11:39The analysis I get is mostly looking at the videos,
11:45looking at the game back and then see what they do, see what we can do better.
11:51And sometimes we add to that a bit of data,
11:54but it's not like on a daily basis looking for 2.5 hours in all the data I get at this club.
11:59There is a lot of data if we want to,
12:02but the most things we do is looking at the game back
12:08and making clips for the players on a team basis or an individual basis.
12:13So you're not really a coach who uses data very much?
12:17Yes, we do, but not 2.5 hours a day.
12:21So you get some data and I tend to use it whenever it's comfortable for me.
12:25But the data we do use, but I think that's at every club at any serious level at the moment,
12:31that's performance-related, and that is data that we definitely use,
12:36because we want to keep the players as much available as we can,
12:41so therefore we use a lot of performance data,
12:44but I don't think Liverpool is any different than all the clubs in the Premier League
12:48and I think all around the world.
12:52I'd just like to ask about Carlos, who's obviously facing his former club tomorrow.
12:56When he was at Brighton he was playing a bit of a tough midfield role,
13:00he scored 10 goals, it was last season before he joined Liverpool.
13:03He played a little bit deeper, maybe at the club,
13:06do you see him playing that number 10 role for yourself,
13:08or do you prefer him where he can pick the ball and play a bit more?
13:12He's a player that I would maybe play at all three positions in the midfield,
13:16because he's so comfortable in all these three positions.
13:19I think I saw quite a lot of him at Brighton,
13:24because there was a manager I was quite interested in back then,
13:27that was De Celbi, of course.
13:29And I saw him a lot playing double six there as well,
13:33and in some moments he also played, like you said, as a tempo.
13:37He can play both, I think he is now in the moment a midfielder that plays a bit in between,
13:44so Ryan is always the deepest, Dom or Curtis are playing a bit higher,
13:50and then he's in between, and it depends on how dominant we are,
13:55if he is the second temp or if he has to be the second six.
13:59But he's comfortable in both phases of the game,
14:02he can help a lot with us bringing the ball out from the back,
14:06and he's also capable of making the difference in and around the 18-yard box.
14:11So we like to see him in both situations as much as we can.
14:17Arne, you've rotated at left-back quite a bit so far this season.
14:21Over recent years it's always been Andy Roberts and first-choice Kostas as the backup option.
14:26Is that now becoming more of a dilemma for you in terms of that battle for that spot?
14:31No, I wouldn't say a dilemma.
14:34It is in more positions where we've rotated,
14:37so maybe a bit of focus on the left full-back position,
14:39but the left wing has been under rotation,
14:42in the midfield we've rotated, in the nine position we've rotated.
14:45It probably also has to do with Robbo's pre-season,
14:50and what does that mean?
14:53He had no pre-season because he came back injured from the Euros,
14:56so he missed almost complete pre-season,
14:59which was for most of them only two weeks, but for him it was only a few days.
15:05Kostas did really well in that period of time,
15:09so it has to do with the quality Kostas brings in that position,
15:13but it definitely also has to do with Robbo missing pre-season,
15:16so that's why we started rotating from the start of it,
15:19because if a player didn't have any pre-season,
15:22there was no time to bring him to a situation where he could play three games in a row.
15:26Because we tried to build up our players for that programme,
15:29and for him that was difficult because he missed out on pre-season,
15:33where others were there.
15:35So, yeah, that's his situation, and I think it was good for him to play Arsenal,
15:42and now again the game against Brighton during the week,
15:46that makes sure that he's getting into that rhythm of playing twice a week.
15:53Arnott, we've seen managers come into the league,
15:57come into new big clubs, and not put as much emphasis on the cup competitions,
16:02you look like Pep Guardiola, Jürgen Klopp, they focus on the league first.
16:06How important is the FA Cup and Carabao Cup to you?
16:10If it's the next game, it's a really important one.
16:14On Tuesday it was the next game, so it was really important.
16:19I played both times, I didn't play our starters, so is it then for me not important?
16:25No, it's really important for me, because we played so many games,
16:30it was a good moment for the other ones to play,
16:32because at that moment I felt they were better able to win that game for us
16:35than the ones that have already played so many games.
16:38Now we won it, and you probably tell me,
16:40yeah, you put a lot of emphasis on this cup,
16:42you would have lost it, you would have said,
16:44yeah, if you miss out on so many starters, it's a logical result.
16:48We want to win every game, we want to compete for every trophy,
16:52especially if it's one we have to defend, and that is with the Carabao Cup.
16:57And the FA Cup is coming in January, so let's think about it then.
17:01But people already told me that it is a very important cup to win.