Arne Slot explained how Liverpool’s energy, coupled with the intensity of the Anfield atmosphere, in Sunday’s 2-0 victory over Manchester City ‘stood out’ to him.
The Reds established a nine-point lead at the top of the Premier League as goals from Cody Gakpo and Mohamed Salah saw them beat the reigning champions.
Gakpo opened the scoring in the 12th minute by nudging home Salah’s cross and the Egyptian sealed the deserved win from the penalty spot late in the second half.
Playing against Real Madrid, playing against Man City, teams that have been and are so good, with managers that have won so many trophies, it’s always nice to come out in both situations as a winner. But the reason why these teams won so many things is that they weren’t able to win once or twice, they were able to win every three days. So, we’re really happy with these two wins, but we also understand if we want to achieve more than this then winning once or twice – even against these big teams – is not enough to win anything in the end of the season.
On whether that was a performance of ‘potential title winners’…
I think if you want to win anything, and that’s what I just said, it’s not about what you are able to do, but it’s more about the consistency. Only a few teams maybe have won from City or from Real Madrid once in a while, but it’s not about winning once or twice against them. If you want to win anything, it’s all about consistency. These teams – like Madrid, like City, but I saw Arsenal yesterday and I saw Chelsea today – they are all capable of getting the same winning streak as we have, so let’s not get carried away by one or two wins.
It’s all about consistency until the end of the season, keeping the players fit, keeping them playing with this much energy. And like you probably saw today, I only had five defenders available. So to win something in the end, there’s such a long way to go and so many challenges to take. But it’s good that we are capable of winning against these teams in our own style.
On the first-half display and whether it was ‘close to perfect’…
Yes, especially with the combination with the energy we had and the crowd had. I’ve experienced already a few nice moments here as a manager – Wednesday night was definitely one of them. But I think today stood out when it comes to the energy we delivered on the pitch but also the energy the fans delivered for us. Yeah, then probably what we all saw is that only being 1-0 up at half-time, we would have loved to see a bigger margin. But I’ve said it in many interviews already, I’ve watched this game so many times… I always made sure I could watch this game, and it’s always been great games. So, maybe for the fans that were neutral they liked it that it stayed 1-0 and it was tight until the end.
