Arne Slot tasted defeat as Liverpool head coach for the first time today, with Nottingham Forest coming to Anfield and recording a 1-0 victory.
The decisive moment came through Callum Hudson-Odoi in the 72nd minute as his shot from outside the penalty area went in off the upright.
Speaking on co-commentary duty for Premier Sports (via CaughtOffside), Gary Breen pointed the finger of blame at Ibrahima Konate for blocking the vantage point of Alisson Becker.
The Frenchman had generally been impressive since replacing Jarell Quansah at half-time in the opening day win over Ipswich, but Slot has reportedly had reservations about the 25-year-old over some aspects of his defending (Football Insider).
Perhaps Konate’s positioning didn’t help Alisson for Hudson-Odoi’s match-winning goal, and that in itself may infuriate Slot, but it’d be unfair to pin the result solely on the France international.
As per Sofascore, the centre-back won six of his nine duels, completed 58 of his 62 passes (94%) and made four clearances, so over the 90 minutes he wasn’t particularly poor.
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In truth, Liverpool as a team didn’t do nearly enough in the second half – either before or after the goal – to deserve anything out of today’s match.
Slot named the same starting XI for the third game in a row this afternoon, but we suspect that there’ll be a few changes for Tuesday’s Champions League opener away to AC Milan.
It could be interesting to see if one of those alterations comes at centre-back…
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Absolute nonsense. It was mainly down to Bradley being out of position and allowing Odie to come inside. If anyone had done their homework on him they would see this is a regular trait of his. Poor display from pretty much the whole team. Got drawn into what looked like a Sunday League game.
It’s a bad day all round but Slot was really shown to be lacking. The team looked tired from the off he should have considered the international break more, while his substitutions added nothing, in fact made us worse. The 3 at the back move was a bad decision as it just added to confusion. ‘Sloball’ today was a mess.
Very poor.from Liverpool. Salah well below par and should have been subbed. Szobo also quite ineffective
Strange decision to take off Mac Allister……..and Konate
Chances were there ……but no clinical ruthless finishing……..against a scrappy Forest team who actually defended quite well.
Slot got it wrong. Liverpool has not scored a goal when Trent is not playing and Bradley is right back. We needed a goal before making the change to make Trent less creative. Slot like many think that Bradley is a good alternative to Trent which is not true. As long as we need a goal Trent must be played where he is most creative at RB. Bradley should be used to see out a game already won.
The best form of defence is offensive chaos which Trent offers.
Against Manchester United last week, the Sub of Gakpo, Nuz did not improve the game though Liverpool was winning. With Forest aiming for a draw match and going for long balls taking out Diaz and letting Alex Trent into the middle played into Forest’s tactic with Alex Trent playing up the ball into nowhere or headed away by Forest defenders every time. With Slot always blaring out his tactics with his big mouth, things is not going to work, even with weak opponents.
The players are tired after international matches.Liverpool will come back stronger.
Bradley was at fault for the goal. Robertson could handle the ex-Manu player. Nunez, Gomez and Jones should have started. My team would have been Allisson, Bradley, Gomez, Konate, VD, Gravenbach, Endo, Jones, Gapko, Nunez and Salah.
VVD should never turn this back on an incoming ball. Stand up and be brave in future.
All of NF players stood firm and put bodies on the line, that was the difference