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Arne Slot told Liverpool players their work rate in the Carabao Cup final was not acceptable during talks aimed at reinforcing the standards that have underpinned their Premier League title pursuit.
Liverpool resume their title challenge with a Merseyside derby against Everton on Wednesday when Slot and his squad will be seeking to put a bruising spell behind them and edge closer to a 20th league championship.
The league leaders exited the Champions League and lost the Carabao Cup final in the space of six days before the international break, prompting Slot to convene a meeting on Monday to address both setbacks.
The head coach said the Wembley defeat against Newcastle was “the first time we deserved to lose a game” this season and that, with hindsight, he could have rotated more given the 120‑minute exertions against Paris Saint-Germain. However, the main purpose of the meeting was to remind Liverpool’s players of the effort required to land silverware.
Slot said: “There was definitely a message to the players and it was as simple as it has always been: don’t accept being outworked by a team, which we were against Newcastle. If the stakes are so high, that is almost unacceptable. It can happen in a season once or twice but it shouldn’t happen many times.
“We showed them the work rate they have put in for so many games in a row. Paris Saint-Germain was a great example of that. Maybe, maybe, I made the biggest mistake by not rotating enough but I thought there were four days in between for Newcastle and they had enough rest. But it is too simple to only say we were outworked; we have to give credit to everything Newcastle did. It was about emphasising what made us where we are now. For me, apart from quality, that is an incredible work rate in every single game we played in the Premier League.”
The 246th Merseyside derby comes 49 days after the explosive last encounter at Goodison Park, when Slot was shown a red card for his outburst against the referee Michael Oliver after the final whistle. The Liverpool head coach believes Everton, unbeaten in nine league matches under David Moyes, will pose similar problems to Eddie Howe’s team.
“It is always difficult when you play against a team like Everton or Newcastle: they bring a lot of balls into your last line,” he said. “In general, I think we have handled that quite well, even Everton away, but we have to play better when we have the ball in our home game and that is something we are focusing on.”
Slot refused to be drawn on reports that Trent Alexander-Arnold is poised to join Real Madrid on a free transfer this summer. The right-back remains sidelined with an ankle injury sustained against PSG and, along with Joe Gomez, will be absent for several more weeks. Conor Bradley could feature, having been out with a hamstring problem since February, and Alisson and Ryan Gravenberch are expected to recover from injuries sustained on international duty.
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Slot, reflecting on a damaging week before the international break, admitted that one result cut much deeper than the other. “For me, the PSG game was harder to take than the Newcastle one,” he said.
“I only felt we had a chance to get a result in the Newcastle game after Federico [Chiesa] scored. And that was only [after] five or six minutes of extra time. The PSG game took me longer to get over because we were so, so close to getting to the quarter‑finals. In the Newcastle game, almost all game you felt it was coming. You were coming close to accepting it. Against PSG you didn’t feel it coming. I felt like our goal was coming.”
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