BREAKING: In the midst of a significant match for Liverpool, Arne Slot discovers the truth that former Red’s boss Jurgen Klopp already understood the difficult way

Arne Slot, the head coach of Liverpool, has a lot of work to do after Nottingham Forest brought up an old problem.

For a long time, it’s been the kind of praise that Liverpool would rather not get. And Arne Slot has already found the problems.

Nottingham Forest’s well-organized and crowded defense made it impossible for Slot’s team to score, as they lost their first game as manager over the weekend. This was similar to the Reds’ most recent Premier League losses, at home to Crystal Palace and away at Everton in the last few weeks of last season.

Such problems are nothing new for a team that wants to make it to the Champions League or even further. So, being able to regularly figure out how to undo these kinds of rearguard acts is what often makes the difference.

After the game, Liverpool goalkeeper Alisson Becker said, “It was a shame. Losing points at home is never good, but the other team only wanted to defend and play for the long ball.”

“We didn’t have enough energy, we couldn’t make much, and the quality was bad.” We lost three points that we didn’t need to. We didn’t have enough clear chances, and they played great defense; they threw themselves in front of the ball.”

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with just trying to defend yourself. There is no one style that is better than any other, even if one person doesn’t like one style more than another.

The statements made by Alisson, which were based on frustration that was easy to understand, may have been taken the wrong way by a Forest team that was ready to attack whenever they could, which led to the winning goal.

And Liverpool’s play did show a worry that Slot himself has already talked about. The Liverpool head coach said, “If you look at the goals we’ve scored so far, we scored a lot of them when we won the ball back, but the other team (Forest) played over our press a lot with a lot of long balls.” “Our last line got the ball most of the time.”

“Today wasn’t good enough because too many of these players’ individual performances when they had the ball weren’t up to the level I expect from them.”

Slot is right. Before the international break, Liverpool scored all three goals in their famous win at Manchester United by putting pressure on the other team high up the field. This made Casemiro and Kobbie Mainoo make two mistakes.

The Reds scored their second goal in the same way they scored their first goal after a quick counterattack from a corner kick the week before.

Only on the first weekend, when they played promoted Ipswich Town, were Slot’s team able to twice break through from open play after having the ball for a long time.

Even Liverpool’s best chance against Forest, when Luis Diaz hit the post, came from the Colombian taking advantage of a mistake made by someone else.

The Reds’ pass success rate of less than 83% wasn’t helping, though. It was a lot lower than in the Brentford game, when it was 92%, which was their best since records began keeping track of this kind of thing 21 years ago.

All of the starting eleven had been on international duty the week before, so there were signs that they were tired. Those who came off the bench were either just as worn out, or in the case of Darwin Nunez and Curtis Jones, they weren’t as sharp after just a few minutes of play this season.

In order to get through well-organized and crowded defenses, you need strong legs and, more importantly, the smarts to figure out a way through. Slot’s team is still getting used to his more thoughtful ways of coaching, so Forest caught Liverpool at a good time.

As for how the foreign break changed things, Slot has learned the hard way that maybe changing things up is important.

Before him, Jurgen Klopp often complained about how national team responsibilities messed up the club season, but he quickly learned how to deal with it. During his time as manager, Liverpool only lost three of the 35 games they played right after an international break, and all three of those losses were to Manchester City.

Because of this, the weekend was a wake-up call, and Slot’s work with this group of players is just getting started.