The wrong move: Arne Slot opens door he wants firmly closed

Arne Slot has opened a door to discussion that he would like to close. It was not a good decision.

Another poor performance from Liverpool on Sunday piled the pressure on Arne Slot. The Reds were horrible as they only got one point at home to Tottenham Hotspur.

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A terrible result, all things considered, made even worse by the terrible spectacle. Liverpool didn’t deserve to beat their opponents, despite Spurs’ horrendous recent form.

And that naturally creates pressure. This was following another terrible performance at Galatasaray and there is a feeling that things just aren’t going to change. We’d say Slot himself also made this clear in his comments after the Spurs draw.

“Usually in the Premier League you see a lot of teams overachieving their xG, but that’s not the case,” Slot said, according to the Athletic. “We haven’t been clinical enough throughout the season. It’s not about the quality of the players. We have incredible strikers who, during their careers, have managed to score a lot of goals.

“We are also struggling to keep clean sheets. We haven’t had as many as we would like if we want to move higher up the table. It’s a bad combination to score as many points as we want.”

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The wrong door to open

Slot made it clear that Liverpool were not performing well. This is different from luck or bad form: the basis of the team is not working.

Why couldn’t a team surpass their xG? He could no luck but that’s rare in a 38 game season. It’s more likely that Liverpool’s xG won’t tell the whole season.

After all, there is a way to “game” the system. Take a large quantity of long shots and you’ll get high xG through quantity rather than quality.