Manager Arne Slot has guided Liverpool to its first win of the Premier League 2024/25 with a 2-0 triumph over newly-promoted Ipswich Town at Portman Road on Saturday 17 August, 2024.
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| Liverpool manager, Arne Slot, during the Premise League 2024/24 match against Ipswich Town at Portman Road on Saturday 17 August, 2024. Photo: @LFC |
The encounter was Slot’s “first Premier League match” and “first Premier League win”.
On his disappointment in the first half performance of his side, Slot said, “we lost the balls too much – I think we lost far too many duels. They were very aggressive.”
According to liverpoolfc.com, Slot’s post-Ipswich press conference:
On the changes made at half-time…
We as a team made a big change at half-time because we came out totally different to how we had come out in the first half. I have to give credit to Ipswich as well because I think they were aggressive, they were not afraid, they were playing one-v-one all over the pitch to defend us.
On how long Salah can keep playing at the highest level after setting another Premier League record…
If I see what he does to keep his body as it is and to be ready to play every game, I think there are many more years inside of him to play. But, if you’re OK with it, I am looking now at Brentford and not at the end of the season!
On what he was disappointed with in the first half…
No, [it was] not so much that we lost the balls too much – I think we lost far too many duels. They were very aggressive, which led to three yellow cards – but in a good way aggressive – and we didn’t cope with that well enough, in my opinion. That’s what I said to them at half-time, if you want to win here then you need to go a step up in terms of winning your duels first and make a fight out of it, instead of accepting that every time we play a ball long that the ball ends up in our 16 again.
On his first impressions of the Premier League…
When I started here, there were many things that had been told to me, but one of them was that Jürgen [Klopp] hated the 12.30 kick-off, and today the team showed that we hated the 12.30 kick-off because we were not in the game in the first half.
