Slot vows to fight on | OneFootball

Arne Slot has vowed to “fight on” at Liverpool and insists that support from the club’s hierarchy remains intact despite alarming home defeats to Nottingham Forest and PSV Eindhoven.

The Liverpool head coach met sporting director Richard Hughes on Thursday to review the Champions League loss to PSV, a result that extended their slump to nine defeats in 12 matches. It is the club’s worst run since an identical sequence in 1953-54 and has increased the scrutiny on Slot ahead of Sunday’s Premier League trip to West Ham.

Slot admitted after Wednesday’s defeat that he would await the club’s assessment in their next conversation. Speaking at a press conference on Thursday — arranged before the PSV loss — he maintained that nothing had changed.

“We’ve had the same conversations as since I arrived,” he said. “Not sure if I said it last night, but we fight on. We try to improve, that’s what we all try, but the conversations have been the same for the past one and a half years.”

Rising pressure

He acknowledged the rising pressure amid Liverpool’s worst run in 71 years, but rejected suggestions that morale has collapsed or that his players have let him down.

“I didn’t see morale being low at the start or at 1-0 yesterday, but after the third, fourth or fifth setback I saw a very difficult five to 10 minutes,” he said.

“We still generated enough chances at 2-1, after even more setbacks, to make it 2-2. But at 3-1 I could see it hurt the players. That wasn’t a period where our fighting spirit was at its best — and that’s putting it mildly.”

Despite that concession, and the visibly flat body language at full-time in both recent defeats, Slot insists the Premier League champions have not lost their edge or their commitment.

Alisson set to return

Slot, who expects Alisson to return from illness on Sunday and could also have Hugo Ekitiké and Florian Wirtz available, added: “In the first 85 minutes, or for large parts of the PSV game, I saw a team that has had a lot of setbacks recently and was still willing to fight.

“Not always with the end product you’d prefer — because fight alone doesn’t win games. You need something extra: quality in one-v-ones, good delivery into the box, arriving at the right moments.

“But I see a team that never gives up. I see it in the running stats, I see it in the chances we create after going behind. I agree the last five or 10 minutes against Forest, and again yesterday, were not at the same level as the rest of the game.

“For me, that doesn’t mean this team lacks fighting spirit — maybe in those final minutes, yes, but not across the game.”