Arne Slot has challenged his Liverpool side to show an instant reaction and said many performances ‘were not up to standards’ he is used to after the Reds fell to defeat against Nottingham Forest.
Callum Hudson-Odoi scored a 72nd-minute winner for Forest as Nuno Espirito Santo’s men perfectly executed a gameplan of frustrating Liverpool and then catching them on the counter-attack late on.
Slot’s side created chances without severely testing goalkeeper Matz Sels and Slot said: ‘We had a lot of ball possession but only managed to create three or four quite good chances. That’s by far not enough. We need to be much better, we lost the ball so many times.
‘That’s the main story from the game – ball possession was not good enough. (Overall) it was not good enough today because too many individual performances in ball possession were not up to the standards that I’m used to from these players.’
Asked if it is a setback to the process of transition from Jurgen Klopp – this was their first goal conceded and defeat after starting the season with three wins from three – the Dutch head coach added: ‘Not to the process, but it is a big setback.
Liverpool's perfect run to the start of the season came to an end against Nottingham Forest
‘If you lose a home game that’s always a setback especially if you face a team (like Forest). You never know, maybe they will go all the way to fight for the Champions League places – but normally this team isn’t ending up in top 10.
‘So if you lose a game against them that’s a big disappointment although they were organised and structured really well today. We need to go out to work again tomorrow, analyse what we did well and what we didn’t do well.’
Forest are unbeaten in the league and were momentarily in the top four places before Aston Villa played Everton. It was their first league win at Anfield since 1969 and Nuno said: ‘I am very happy, many of our fans today in the stadium were not even born (when they last won here).’
Liverpool must react quickly as this was the first of seven games in 22 days. They travel to Italy on Tuesday to face AC Milan in the San Siro before hosting Bournemouth at Anfield next Saturday.