Arne Slot stopped short of laying into his Liverpool players after a chaotic 3-2 defeat at Fulham put Premier League title celebrations on temporary hiatus. The gap between them and Arsenal stayed at 11 points, meaning Liverpool still need another 11 to prevail after a defeat, just their second of the campaign, that owed much to some poor defending in the first half at Craven Cottage. “This can happen against a good team like Fulham,” Slot said. “If you make mistakes they have the quality to punish them.”
Fulham’s goals from Ryan Sessegnon, the outstanding Alex Iwobi and Rodrigo Muniz all came within a first 45 minutes where Curtis Jones was playing as an emergency right-back. Each of his more experienced defensive colleagues were just as culpable, including Virgil van Dijk.
“It wasn’t 45 minutes of disaster but the errors we made, I think is something we’re not used to,” Slot said. “One of the reasons why we are in the position we are in is we don’t make a lot of mistakes. And if we do, players try to make up for them.”
Slot denied Arsenal’s draw with Everton on Saturday had led to any stepping off the gas. “There is no reason for us to be complacent,” he said. “We’re not number one because we win games by three or four goals.
“I think everyone has seen that to win our games it takes us so much effort, so much hard work, combined with quality of course. We are fully aware we have to compete for seven more games. Today was a close call, and many times we’ve been on the right side. Today we were on the wrong side.”
He refused to be drawn on either Van Dijk’s troubles or those of Mohamed Salah, who put in an anonymous performance to continue his recent slump. “I still see a lot of things that Virgil does really well, but if you play 50-60 games a season there will be moments, even for him, where you could have done better.”
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On Salah, Slot said: “Maybe he should take it as a compliment because his numbers weren’t normal. The good thing about Mo is that he knows what kind of player he is. Mo will show up again, I don’t worry about that.”
Slot denied tiredness after a bruising midweek Merseyside derby was any issue. “No, there were four days and we’ve showed many times we can handle that. I don’t think the errors we have made were anything to do with players being tired.”
The Fulham manager, Marco Silva, was delighted with a signature victory over a team he labelled “probably the next champions”. He said: “Liverpool are one of the best teams in Europe. The way they attack, the way they move the ball, but we stayed confident. They put us under pressure at 3-2 but before that we were the best team.”