Give Liverpool’s new guiding light a full week with his players and he can work as he wants, just as he did for an opening three league games in charge that we can now officially call the honeymoon period.
But when those players have flown around the world only to return and deliver a performance this sluggish, if you’re not careful you can get caught out by a seasoned manager and the impressive options he has at his disposal. Jurgen Klopp would often talk about fixture congestion and the need to keep players fresh, and here was Slot learning all about that in real time.
This was a game in which substitutions told the story. Slot, having opted to pick the same XI for the third game in a row, finally relented and made a triple change to his lacklustre side – all XI of whom had been away on international duty – on the hour mark.
At the same time the clever Nuno Espirito Santo introduced Anthony Elanga on the right wing, with Callum Hudson-Odoi having already entered the action on the left.
He had sensed weakness, and perhaps Slot’s regret at not freshening things up from the start. There was a game to be won and Forest were going to win it.
“The players did it so well, we were against the ropes but we stayed in the game and found our moment,” said the Portuguese boss. “Defensively we were really good. It was impossible for our wingers to last 90 minutes, they had to track the runners so we needed fresh legs in the second half.”
“The manager gives us belief every day that we are good enough anywhere we go,” said skipper Ryan Yates.
“We respect the opponents but we really showed our quality. The crowd can be powerful here so we had to have spells of possession and limit our mistakes.”
Until the introduction of Forest’s dazzling wingers the major problem facing Liverpool’s players had been locating the other red shirts in their vicinity.
Luis Diaz struck the post in the first half and Alexis Mac Allister brought a good save from Matz Sels, whose most uncomfortable moment came when he almost dropped a looping Diaz header into his own net. That would have given Liverpool a lead they hadn’t deserved, and by the hour mark Diaz and Mac Allister – opponents in Barranquilla, Colombia in midweek – had both been taken off along with the ineffective Diogo Jota.
Those changes resulted in Trent Alexander-Arnold, after a week of starring at right-back for England, moving into midfield where he struggled at the Euros. He looked lost, but the irony wasn’t.
With Mo Salah also having an off day, Forest struck the clinical killer blow 18 minutes from time.
Elanga raced away down the right and evaded an apology of a challenge from Cody Gakpo, but when he found Hudson-Odoi the former Chelsea winger still had a lot to do. He did it superbly, cutting inside and bending in a shot from 20 yards that Alisson could only watch nestle into the far corner.
“It wasn’t good enough today because too many individual performances in ball possession were not of the standards that I am used to from these players,” said Slot.
As the schedule intensifies starting with a trip to Milan, Liverpool can’t afford for him to be learning on the job for too long.
