Liverpool: Arne Slot admits leaky defence a concern ahead of Premier League curtain-raiser | OneFootball

Premier League champions were defeated on penalties at Wembley

Arne Slot admitted he is concerned by the number of goals Liverpool have conceded during pre-season.

The Reds twice led Crystal Palace in the Community Shield but were pegged back on each occasion, as Jean Philippe-Mateta's penalty cancelled out Hugo Ekitike's early opener before Ismaila Sarr sent it to a shootout after Jeremie Frimpong had restored Liverpool's lead.

Slot's side were beaten 4-2 by AC Milan last month and have not kept a clean sheet in any of the four matches since.

There were positives in attack against Palace, with Ekitike scoring on his competitive debut and fellow summer signing Florian Wirtz also impressing, and Slot believes his side are now more dangerous going forward.

"The whole pre-season we've seen we are able to create more and we are more comfortable on the ball," Slot said.

"We create more opportunities, chances, we dominate maybe even more. Last season we had a lot of ball possession but that didn't always lead to promising situations.

"Now we are better at creating and getting in promising situations than we were in my opinion throughout all of last season."

However, five days out from Liverpool's Premier League opener at home to Bournemouth, Slot accepted that changes could be required defensively to ensure his side are not letting in so many goals.

"The other side is also true," Slot said.

"We've conceded four against Milan, one against the Japanese team, two against Bilbao and two again here today.

"What made us really strong last season was we mostly won by one goal. That had mostly to do with us keeping a clean sheet or at a maximum conceding one goal."

The Liverpool boss added: "It needs maybe a little bit of an adjustment defensively at the moment because we don't concede a lot of chances but we do concede goals at the moment."