🔗 Share this article

Arne Slot declared he needed to “look at myself” following the Reds endured a sixth defeat in seven English top-flight matches at home to Nottingham Forest and insisted he would find a solution out of the champions’ poor run.

Nottingham Forest, in the relegation zone before kick off, delivered the largest victory at Anfield in their history as the Merseyside club fell to an 8th defeat in 11 matches in every tournament. The most expensive domestic acquisition, Alexander Isak, was again anonymous and the home side contended Murillo’s first goal ought to have been ruled out for similar reasons to Virgil van Dijk’s chalked-off goal against City before the national team pause. But the manager admitted the responsibility rested with him and made no excuses.

“No one wants to listen to me now speaking about refereeing decisions if you lose 3-0 at home to Forest,” said the Reds' boss. “I ought to examine myself initially and my team, but it demonstrates you how a goal can change the momentum of a match. Before I was just hoping for us to score a strike. Afterwards we hardly generated any chances.

“Of course there is a path forward, especially with the talented footballers we have. Regardless if you win or are beaten when you reflect you are always considering: ‘Where can we do better, where can we adjust?’ but that is something else from questioning your abilities.

“I wish to emphasise I am responsible for the present losses. You are answerable when you are victorious but also responsible when you are losing. I can never provide sufficient reasons for us to have the results we have. That is not good enough and I am to blame for that.”

Liverpool’s performance unravelled as the coach introduced several attacking substitutions when chasing the match. “It was the identical away at Forest the previous campaign,” he said. “I took Ibou [Ibrahima Konaté] out and brought on the Portuguese forward and he scored immediately to make it 1-1. At that time it was courageous, currently it’s probably stupid.”

The Anfield side previously were defeated in back-to-back at Anfield Premier League games against Nottingham Forest in 1963. The most recent occasion they suffered consecutive league matches by a three-goal margin was in 1965.

Slot said: “It was extremely poor. Competing on home soil, conceding 3-0 no matter which team you encounter is a very, very bad result. Surprising if you look at the first half-hour of the match. I haven’t seen us producing so many chances in the initial half-hour maybe the entire campaign, and the initial occasion they arrived in our penalty area they found the back of the net.

“It did not happen against Manchester City, but in every other game we have been the dominant side and were able to generate opportunities. Recently it is almost consistently that we miss our opportunities and the ones we concede go in.”