After Liverpool’s 5-0 victory over West Ham, Jarell Quansah and Arne Slot both pointed to the lessons learnt from their recent 6-3 thrashing of Tottenham.
Despite Liverpool playing some stunning football, Slot admitted after beating Tottenham on December 22 that he was still looking for improvements in defensive areas.
The coach managed to see the positives in still having things to work on, saying: “Hopefully that’s the good thing about these 15 minutes that we showed (when Spurs scored twice in the second half).
“That we understand we cannot underestimate one minute in the Premier League, because then we’re not as good as we might think we are if we are on top of our game.”
While West Ham hit the woodwork three times, Liverpool’s win at the London Stadium was more defensively assured as they controlled the game’s flow for longer, limiting the opposition to just 0.36 xG according to FotMob.
Quansah, who came on for the injured Joe Gomez in the 37th minute, told LFC TV: “I feel like we’ve learned a lot from the Spurs game as well.
“I think it shows learning because we were in a similar position against them and maybe we let them creep back into the game a little bit, and today I think we wanted to show that we are capable of seeing out games and seeing it [out] in a dominant way.”
Slot felt similarly and was asked if the team had improved in December, to which he replied: “Maybe we are a bit better, but it’s not like we’ve increased enormously.
“What we did increase is scoring goals. There were games where we could’ve scored many more goals, but we didn’t because we missed a few chances.
“Even today I think it was at half-time 3-0, but after 10 or 15 minutes we could’ve scored three easily with the quality we have.
“The good thing is that in the last weeks when the opponent had a chance it was a goal. Today they hit the bar and the post, so that is a positive to take.”
Like Quansah, the coach went on to reference the warnings taken from conceding three against Tottenham.
“It’s normal in a season sometimes you miss chances and sometimes in a period of time the other team gets a chance and scores,” added Slot.
“Then sometimes they need two, three or four and don’t score. That is what a season brings as well.
“It’s good for us that we, maybe for the first time, although maybe Tottenham 6-3 stands out as well, but that we have a win which was throughout the whole game quite clear that we would win this game, because many others it was tight until the end.”
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