Slot challenges Liverpool to find consistency after Sunderland win

Liverpool manager Arne Slot praised his side’s resilience but issued a blunt demand for greater consistency after a 1-0 victory at Sunderland kept alive their push for a Champions League place.

Virgil van Dijk’s towering header on 68 minutes proved enough to settle a tight contest at the Stadium of Light and make the Reds the first Premier League team to leave Wearside with three points this season. The result trimmed the gap to the top four and offered swift redemption after last weekend’s defeat to Manchester City, yet Slot warned that sporadic responses will not suffice.

“Yeah, but we’ve shown that response so many times already this season,” the Dutch coach said when asked whether the win represented the perfect reaction. “Now it’s not the consistency and the results because it’s not a coincidence that we win here tonight, or that we’ve won our games, because we’re usually the better team on the pitch.

“It’s more surprising to see that from all the times that we were the better team we didn’t make wins. But actually, today you could again see the reason why.”

Slot pointed to a familiar flaw: profligacy in front of goal. Liverpool carved out a succession of promising breaks—four-versus-three and three-versus-two situations, by his count—but required a set-piece breakthrough to escape the North East with victory.

“If you create so many chances… that should, with the quality we have—and that will, by the way—lead to us scoring much more chances and much more goals,” he continued. “In the end we needed a set-piece to score, and we usually have against these teams ten set-pieces, but we usually—and people from Liverpool can tell you—don’t score from set-pieces. But tonight we did and that’s the biggest difference to Burnley at home… I can come up with all these [examples]; Leeds away, Leeds at home—all these games.”

The candid assessment underlined Slot’s belief that dominance on the pitch has too rarely translated into points on the board. With the season entering its decisive phase, the head coach’s message was clear: Liverpool must turn occasional statements of intent into a sustained run if they are to gate-crash the Champions League places.