Quiet FA Cup exit. It was his heaviest defeat as a Liverpool manager. A senior player says he didn’t have the “fighting spirit.”
Arne Slott was under fresh pressure after Saturday’s 4-0 defeat at Manchester City, with a 20-minute collapse that left little to be explained.
“I’m incredibly disappointed,” the Dutchman said after Liverpool were eliminated in the FA Cup quarter-finals at the Etihad Stadium.
After winning the Premier League in his first season in charge last year and overseeing a $570 million splurge on new players in the summer, Slott saw Liverpool suffer a major slump, losing 15 games in all competitions. This is the highest total in a single season since the 2014-15 season.
The Reds are fifth in the league, 21 points behind first-placed Arsenal, and are one game away from winning the Champions League trophy. Liverpool will face defending champions Paris Saint-Germain in the quarter-finals starting next week.
Slott’s predecessor, Jurgen Klopp, described Liverpool’s players as “mental monsters”, but there was a lack of fight within the team, particularly from the 39th minute to the 57th minute, when City scored all of their goals.
“There wasn’t enough fighting spirit, there wasn’t enough mentality. None of us were there as honestly as we could have been,” Liverpool midfielder Dominik Szoboszlai said.
When asked why these attributes don’t exist, he added, “That’s a good question. I don’t know. It’s hard to find the words, to be honest.”
Szoboszlai’s comments were subsequently published in the slot.
“You should ask what he means and for what period of time,” Slott said. “If he felt that was the whole game, I didn’t feel that way until the moment they scored 1-0.
“In those 10, 15 minutes (at the start of the second half), we lost our fighting spirit… the desire to win duels, the desire to be there first and make it difficult for passes, crosses and finishes. That’s definitely something we have to improve on Wednesday (against PSG),” he added.
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