Liverpool manager Arne Slott expressed his disappointment at the 2-3 defeat by Bournemouth in the Premier League yesterday, but explained it with the team's busy schedule and added that the energy was simply lacking on the away trip to the south coast of England last night, BTA reported.
The “cherries“ winger Amin Adri scored the winning goal yesterday, literally with the last shot of the match. Much more inexplicable, however, is that the situation for the goal came from a throw-in from the right, as the ball fell on the edge of the small field and none of the champions' defenders were able to clear it. Adli crept up to the near post and from a tight angle managed to slot it into the net.
Slot's players returned to their home form after a convincing 3-0 win away to Olympique Marseille in the Champions League this week and looked set to register a fifth consecutive draw. Virgil van Dijk and Dominik Szoboszló scored for them to cancel out goals from Evanilsson and Alex Jimenez.
“Conceding a goal is always disappointing, especially when you don't have time to react. But to be honest, they could have scored 3-2 a little earlier. After we tied it at 2-2, it may not be very prestigious, but I'll say it – "Some of our players are exhausted," Slott explained what was happening in the team after the defeat in Dorset, which places them in 4th place with 36 points and 14 behind leaders Arsenal. "And I don't even have the right to criticize them because we played only three days ago, and that was an away game at the other end of Europe, in the south of France. We are the only team in the Champions League that only has two days between games. And from an away game we go to another away game, which coincidentally is against one of the most intense teams in the League. And I have to go out with almost the same squad, just because of the players we have." The Dutch specialist then explains more things that he saw as positives and as mistakes. What shouldn't have happened is that we were whining in the last 10 minutes, when we were really eliminated. But in the remaining 80 minutes we dominated, it was different“.
A miscalculation by captain Virgil van Dijk led to the first goal for the home team, scored by Evanilsson in the 26th minute. In the 33rd minute it became 2-0 at a time when Liverpool were temporarily down to 10 men, as Wataru Endo had not yet come on to replace the injured Joe Gomez.
„I don't think it's fair to blame Virgil for the first goal. You saw how much the wind had on the long balls. And he wasn't the only one on the pitch who couldn't find his bearings. And the second goal - we're down to 10, it's ridiculous. Maybe these things sum up our season. Every time it's something different, every time it's something special how we concede, but we concede. "The only ones we can blame are ourselves," Slott added.
The victory moved Bournemouth up to 13th place - 10 points above the relegation zone and just six behind their opponents from the match in question.