In the 23rd round of the Premier League, Liverpool suffered a heartbreaking 2-3 away defeat to Bournemouth after conceding a last-minute winner. After the match, Liverpool manager Slot spoke to beIN Sports.
Arne, it was heart-wrenching in the final moments. Please describe this match in one word.
“Heartbreaking” might be the most fitting word to describe this match. Going from 2-0 down—considering how and when we conceded those goals—this game was truly painful. I remember the first goal they scored; it was the first time I genuinely felt they posed a real threat to us. Before that moment, we were actually in a very strong position—I was even waiting for us to score—but then they struck first. That’s also a testament to their quality, as Evanilson is always moving and constantly tries to appear at critical moments.
Because of that goal, we were left with only 10 players, which pretty much summarizes our entire season. Perhaps the whole match encapsulates our season so far: conceding again with 10 men on the pitch, and then conceding once more in stoppage time—that’s essentially the story of our season.
Were you also surprised by how quickly the referee blew the final whistle right after the decisive goal?
Not particularly surprised. If there were four minutes of added time, and they scored in the fourth-and-a-half or fifth minute, it wouldn’t have been unexpected for the referee to blow the whistle immediately. What surprised me more was that the referee only added four minutes. But this isn’t the first time this season that the amount of stoppage time has caught me off guard.
Van Dijk also felt he was obstructed during the winning goal, but I’ll set that aside for now since I only have three questions. You had a chance to solidify your position in the top four, only to have it snatched away in the final minute. You still have important matches coming up in the next few weeks. You did score a goal from a corner today, which is certainly a positive, but what more needs to be done going forward? Playing with only 10 men was indeed unusual, but weren’t those small details—like ensuring the ball was properly cleared—the very mistakes that ultimately cost you?
Conceding three goals was too many. If we’d only conceded two while scoring two ourselves, we should have won. Three goals against is simply too much—and to be fair, in the final 10 minutes, we might have conceded even more. You could see that the same players have been playing repeatedly; I noticed some of them were clearly exhausted, yet I could only make five substitutions at most. During that period, Bournemouth was an extremely high-intensity team—they play just once a week, whereas we only had two days of rest. We were probably the only team this season to play an away Champions League match and then face another away fixture just two days later.
Very often, it’s the same group of players taking the field—if not, people would say, “Liverpool has a large squad; you should rotate more.”
So you have to consider how many matches these same players are being asked to play. I can only express immense respect for them—they’ve managed to stay fit and keep going, which is incredibly difficult when fielding the same players so frequently. But ultimately, this did hurt us, because I felt they were closer to making it 3-2 than we were to turning the game around.