New Delhi: Liverpool head coach Arne Slot revealed the “bad thing” about their pre-season loss against Preston North End in a game that was played behind closed doors.
Preston emerged victorious with a 1-0 scoreline against a Liverpool side that mostly consisted of academy prospects at the AXA Training Centre.
Senior players like Curtis Jones, Mohamed Salah and Dominik Szoboszlai featured in the playing XI but were replaced after the first half.
Despite the result, the most important thing about the game was that all players were fit before and during the game.
“After two weeks of tough training sessions, it’s important to play a game as well. The most important thing is that everybody was fit before the game, and they stayed fit during the game as well,” Slott told Liverpoolfc.com.
“So it’s been a good two weeks. Unfortunately, the result today was not what we wanted, but they stayed fit, many of them got minutes, [and] also a lot of young players got a few minutes, so that was a good thing,” he added.
Liverpool stayed in control for the majority of the game, but all Preston needed was one shot to take away the victory.
Slot was delighted to see the players implementing the tactics that he introduced during the training session. But a remarkable long-range goal from Robbie Brady ended up settling the game in favour of Preston.
“Like I said, we controlled the game completely; we only conceded one shot. The bad thing about it was that that shot went in [it was] a great goal, though. We had some good build-up moments, had some good chances in the first half as well,” he said.
“Second half, I didn’t think we created that much, which is normal because there were a lot of young players in the term who didn’t play in their own positions sometimes as well. So, we couldn’t have asked for more from the boys in the first two weeks – [they have] worked really hard, tried to implement ideas, and it’s not that we only bring new ideas. There are a lot of things that have been done here that were really good,” he added.
Liverpool will play their next pre-season game against Real Betis on July 27 at Acrisure Stadium, Pennsylvania.
