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Arne Slot offered a very honest assessment of Liverpool’s performance at Ipswich, and it is safe to say he was far from impressed by what he saw in the first half – we can’t blame him.
The Reds’ first 45 minutes at Portman Road saw them head into the dressing room with zero shots on target and having won only 36 percent of their ground duels.
Ipswich were more physical and it left Slot to say that the “first half was not good enough, [the] second half was a real good performance.”
After swapping out Jarell Quansah for Ibrahima Konate at the break for tactical reasons, Liverpool went on to score twice, have 15 shots on goal and win the second-half duel count.
“The second half was a joy to watch”
Arne Slot reflects on his Liverpool side’s first Premier League game of the season ?
?? @lynseyhipgrave1 | @petercrouch pic.twitter.com/2cb9WVk8yY
— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) August 17, 2024
Slot’s assessment when speaking to TNT Sports and then in his press conference was particularly interesting as he highlighted exactly what he expects from his side.
He explained: “First thing I said [during the break] was we don’t have to speak about tactics if we lose so many duels, and that’s what we did.
“I didn’t see them fight for it in the first half – we lost almost every long ball, every duel to both sides.
“That’s not that Jarell lost every duel – many of us lost too many duels – but I think we needed Konate to win these long balls in the air from the No. 9.
“So that helped, that gave us control but they put so, so, so much energy in the first half and they had to keep on running, keep on fighting.
“They were playing all over the pitch 1v1 and I don’t think they could keep up with that tempo in the second half.”
On the crux of the first-half issue, he said: “I don’t think our problem in the first half was our midfield. Our problem was more that we lost too many duels – our defenders lost too many and our attackers didn’t win enough.”
The forwards were key to exploiting Ipswich‘s 1v1 system as the Reds started to exploit the space in behind, Slot commended that saying, “you could see how good and well we could play in ball possession.”
He added: “If you want to win over here, you need to step up in terms of winning your duels and make a fight out of it instead of accepting every time we play a ball long it ends up in our 16 again.”
It is interesting hearing Slot’s analysis and we will get more of that as the season goes on, and he even had a quip to share in front of the press.
“When I started here, I was told many things,” he said. “One of them was Jurgen hated the 12.30 kick off, and today shows we hated the 12.30 kick off because we were not in the game in the first half.”
Touche.
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