The result was the same, but the Liverpool manager thought his team played better Tuesday than then had on the weekend.
While Liverpool haven’t been at their best to start the 2025-26 season, the results have generally been very, very good. Or at least they were up until the past week, when Liverpool no being at their best played a key role in back-to-back losses, first against Crystal Palace in the league and then Galatasaray in Europe.
As manager Arne Slot sees it, though, there was at least more to like in the Reds’ Champions League defeat on Tuesday than in their Premier League loss at the hands of Palace Saturday, with the most frustrating part of their Galatasaray defeat being how their opponents managed to control the match in the second half.
“For me it was a different loss to the one against Palace,” Slot noted. “For me there was more to like, especially in the first half, which was maybe different to the Palace game. In the second it became much harder for us to create because they were fighting and you have to give credit—but we hardly played in the second half.”
Not that hardly playing was about Liverpool, really. It had more to do with Galatasaray’s efforts—and they were largely successful efforts—to waste time and disrupt play at any and every opportunity, and of referee Clement Turpin’s naiveté in allowing them to get away with their constant play acting and time wasting.
“And by ‘hardly played’ I mean the ball was hardly in play,” Slot clarified. “But it’s disappointing because you play football to win the game and that’s what we didn’t do.”
Category: General Sports
