ES
Arne Slot did not hide behind misfortune.
After Liverpool’s 2-1 defeat to Wolverhampton Wanderers at Molineux on Tuesday night, the Dutchman delivered a blunt assessment of a performance — and a pattern — he believes has defined much of his side’s season.
“Same old story,” Slot said in a post-match interview obtained by our correspondent on Wednesday.
Andre’s stoppage-time deflected strike sealed the win for Wolves after Rodrigo Gomes had opened the scoring in the 78th minute and Mohamed Salah quickly restored parity.
But despite dominating possession and territory, Liverpool left empty-handed — again undone by inefficiency in front of goal and a late twist.
Slot pointed to a recurring issue.
“Recently, we are picking up points because many times we’ve scored from set-pieces, but what did not change in the last five, six or seven games is that we struggle and find it very hard to score from the open-play chances that we do create,” he said.
“Not as many as I would like from all the ball possession we have, but enough and far more than the other team. But, end result, we score one and they score two – and indeed another time in extra time, so it sums up our season again in this game as well.”
Liverpool controlled 65.8 per cent of possession and won 11 corners to Wolves’ two, yet the decisive blow came four minutes into added time via a deflected effort that left Alisson Becker stranded.
For Slot, the frustration was not just the timing — but the familiarity.
“What I mean with ‘it sums up the season’ is that that we’ve had far more ball possession than the other team, we’ve created more open-play and in-general chances than the other team, but from open play we struggle to score,” he said.
“Today again, we had a lot of set-pieces. First half, [they were] very poorly taken – a bit similar to how we played. I don’t think we played a very good first half.”
He acknowledged improvement after the break.
“The second half was better; still not great, but better. Created more and in extra time – or just before extra time – I think we were twice very close from chances to score the 2-1,” he said, referencing Salah’s intercepted dribble and Virgil van Dijk’s late header saved by Jose Sa.
“Those are chances and the one we concede is not even a chance, and that is what has happened so many times to us this season. That it happens in extra time might be a coincidence maybe, although it happened so many times, but we hardly gave away a chance today. We gave away one chance but conceded two.”
Wolves’ compact defensive structure also drew recognition from the Liverpool head coach.
“Well done by Wolves. They made it really hard for us, compact,” Slot said.
He revealed he had urged quicker ball circulation at half-time.
“It was possible to play a bit faster from side to side. And if you play a bit faster than the few times that we did in the first half, our wingers at least have some time to take their full-back on.”
Though Liverpool improved after the interval, Slot admitted the execution in decisive moments fell short.
“‘Slow’ or ‘predictable’ are words that I can understand [Van Dijk] uses,” he said. “If you want to go faster, you have to be able to dominate situations on the sides because then something can happen. We struggled to dominate on the sides today.”
With eight Premier League games remaining, Slot insisted his broader expectations have evolved — but not collapsed.
“My expectations have changed throughout the season because I expected more from us than where we are fighting for now,” he said. “But it’s another setback and we didn’t help ourselves with this result, not at all.”
“There are still eight games to play so we are coming closer and closer to the end and then dropping points in a game where it’s absolutely not necessary if you look at the run of play.”
He added: “If we play this game in this fashion 10 times I don’t think we will lose 10 times. It’s far from sure that we win every time because therefore we were not good enough. If we don’t want to rely on a deflected shot, we need to do better, we have to play better, but we’ve had enough chances to win the game.”
On the decisive moment itself, Slot dissected the sequence without apportioning clear blame.
“You can always do things different but a deflected shot [off Joe Gomez], I have to see how he puts his body in front of the ball and if he could do anything about that or not, or it was just bad luck,” he said.
“But it’s not the first time a ball goes in from a deflected shot.”
For Liverpool, it was another game where dominance did not translate into points — and another late blow that leaves their margin for error shrinking as the season edges toward its conclusion.
Wolves have struggled, sitting at the bottom of the table with 13 points from 29 matches, having recorded just two wins all season.
With this victory over Liverpool, it makes it the club’s third EPL win of the season.
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