Liverpool’s season hasn’t gone to plan, the defending champions following up a summer that saw the Reds consensus winners of the transfer window by slumping to 12th place after 12 matchweeks. After three defeats on the bounce, though, manager Arne Slot’s side finally got on the right side of a result Sunday.
“Relief, although I said immediately to my colleagues it might be a handball,” Slot reflected following his side’s victory away at West Ham over the weekend. “So I wasn’t surprised it took a little while before he said it is a goal. So I was happy, but more when the referee pointed towards the kick-off that it was 2-0.
“In terms of results, it’s of course very good. But there were also a few things similar to other games—again, we couldn’t score our first chances. The good thing was that today for the first time in many, many games the first chance of the opponent didn’t go in as well. The best thing was that it was their only chance.
“This happened so many times to us that the first chance the other team gets goes in and you get a completely different game as we’ve seen many times. People probably say, ‘You had more control, you didn’t concede as much,’ but it’s a difference if you go 1-0 down after five minutes and have to chase the game.”
In addition to the relative novelty of Liverpool finally taking a few of their chances—albeit not their early ones—and their opponents failing to do so, it was also perhaps noteworthy how loudly and continuously the travelling Liverpool fans supported the team and the manager from the opening whistle on Sunday.
There’s been plenty of talk in the press about the difficult position Slot finds himself in with his side struggling far more than anyone imagined they might to defend last season’s Premier League title, and that concern has crept into the fanbase—but when the match kicks off, the supporters have always stuck to supporting.
“It says a lot about the club and the fans that they were not only supportive of me but for our whole team,” he noted. “I think if you have the run of form we are having and the away end is so full and supports the team from start to finish—including me, indeed—that’s special. Not only after 1-0, from start to finish.”