Arne Slot denies the complacency to blame for the defeat of Liverpool in Fulham

Arne Slot denied that the complacency was to blame for the end of the undefeated league race of 26 Liverpool games while they lost 3-2 against Fulham in Craven Cottage.

The leaders of the Premier League, who remain clear at 11 points at the top with seven games to be made, paid the price for a first half performance struck by the errors.

Alexis Mac Allister shot Liverpool in front, but Ryan Sessegnon, Alex Iwobi and Rodrigo Muniz punished a little bad defense before the break.

The replacement Luis Diaz withdrew one, but the end of the visitors’ assault failed to produce an equalizer when they were beaten in the League for the first time since September.

“No, there is no reason why we are complacent,” said Slot. “We are not n ° 1 in the league because we win each match with a margin of three or four goals. It takes so much effort, so much hard work combined with quality for us to win matches.

“The team that won the league in the last four seasons (Manchester City) was already 3-0 at halftime in almost all the matches they have played. It’s not like that for us. We are fully aware of the fact that we must compete for seven additional games.

“On Wednesday, when we played in Everton, it was a close call. Today, we were a tight call. Several times we were on the right side, today we were on the wrong side mainly because of the errors we made.”

Slot made only one change after the mid -week victory over Everton, but he rejected the suggestions that he should have rotated to a greater extent against the Marco Silva team.

“There have been four days between the two and we have shown several times this season, which is not a problem for us,” he added. “I don’t think the mistakes we made had something to do with players’ fatigue.

“But if you look at it, you will probably see some good moments also in the accumulation. After half an hour, I looked at the dashboard and it was 1-1. I said to myself:” Okay, not our best game, but we have control. “Suddenly, I blocked my eyes and we were 3-1.

“It was not 45 minutes of disaster, but the mistakes we made are something we are not used to. It is different than playing badly in my opinion. Of course, it disappoints me, the players and the fans. The reason why we are in the position we are is that we have not made many mistakes.

“The players try to make up for them. This is what we tried to do for their second goal, but unfortunately rather than the ball behind the deviation behind, it did the goal. It can happen, especially when you play a good team like Fulham. They had the quality to punish us.

“In the second half, we have created so much chance that we could have caught up with it, but we did not miss time. During the last 20 to 25 minutes, it was clear for everyone that we could have scored a third goal. This is why the real playing time was not the most in these last 25 minutes.”

(Images Julian Finney / Getty)