Liverpool lose 9th of season in ‘same old story’

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WOLVERHAMPTON, England — Arne Slot said Liverpool’s 2-1 defeat to Wolverhampton Wanderers on Tuesday is a case of the “same old story” after his team conceded yet another late winner in the Premier League.

Wolves midfielder Andre secured the victory for the hosts with a deflected strike in the 94th minute at Molineux Stadium. It means Liverpool have now lost five games thanks to goals after the 90th minute this term; the most of any side in a single campaign in the competition’s history.

“How do I sum this up?” Slot said of his team’s ninth Premier League loss of the season. “Same old story. Recently, we are picking up points because we score many times from set-pieces, but what didn’t change in the last five, six seven games is that we struggle and find it very hard to score from open play chances that we do create.

“Not as much as I would like from all the ball possession we have, but enough and far more than the other team. But the end result is we scored one and they scored two and another one in injury time so it sums up our season again.

“We have had far more possession than the other team, we have created more in open play in general than the other team, but have struggled to score from open play. Recently we have scored a lot from set-pieces. Again we had a lot of set-pieces, but in the first half were very poorly taken.

“I don’t think we played a very good first half, the second half was better, still not great, but better. We created more, and the just before injury time we were twice very close from chances to make it 2-1.

“Mo [Salah] was dribbling and had to the left and right two players open, but the ball was intercepted by their defender and there was the Virgil [van Dijk] header, and the one we conceded wasn’t even a chance.

“That has happened to us so many times this season. That it happened in injury time may be a coincidence, although it has happened so many times. We hardly gave away a chance today, we gave away one chance and conceded two.”

Liverpool’s latest defeat leaves them in fifth place, though they could drop to sixth if Chelsea beat Aston Villa at Villa Park on Wednesday.

Reflecting on whether the loss has impacted his team’s chances of Champions League qualification, Slot said: “It’s another setback and we didn’t help ourselves with this result, not at all. But there are still nine games to play. We are coming closer and closer to the end.

“Dropping points in a game where it’s absolutely not necessary. If you look at the run of play, I’m not saying we played great, but if we play this game in this fashion 10 times we don’t lose 10 times.

“It’s far from sure that we win every time, therefore we are not good enough. If we don’t have to rely on a deflected shot, we have to play better and do better. But we’ve had enough chances to win the game.

“But credit to Wolves as well. They fight from first second until the end and got maybe a bit of a luck they deserve when you look at how much they put in throughout the whole game.”

This post was originally published at ESPN