Arne Slot confessed that he expected more from his second-string Liverpool team after they were stunned by Plymouth in the FA Cup. Ryan Hardie’s penalty sealed a dramatic upset for the team who sit bottom of the Championship.
Premier League leaders Liverpool named a weakened team in Devon. There was no Mohamed Salah, Cody Gakpo, Trent Alexander-Arnold or Virgil van Dijk.
That led to a disjointed performance from which Plymouth capitalised. Harvey Elliott handled in the penalty area and Hardie dispatched the subsequent 53rd-minute spot-kick.
Slot’s decision to leave many of his big-hitters in Liverpool faced scrutiny from pundits.
Asked if the players who featured could have done better, Slot told ITV Sport: “I think they’re able to do better. But it’s a system and a playing style [from Plymouth] which is quite hard to create chances against.
“That’s what we saw today. I wasn’t surprised because in the lead up to this game, we saw lots of long balls, second balls, and if we had the ball, they were really aggressive. That was expected.
“It’s not always easy to create your chances when the team has not played with each other so many times. We expected them to play a better game than this, but we have to give credit to Plymouth as well.”
Slot was then pressed on whether losing to a struggling second-tier side will ‘hurt’. The Liverpool head coach responded: “I think it hurts everyone. That includes Liverpool fans, me, the players. We were all wanting to be in this competition for as long as possible. If you go out in the first possible game, that’s a sad manner.
“Today, they kept on fighting until the last second. Maybe the only chances we created were in the last five, 10, 15 minutes. It wasn’t a work-rate problem, they worked really hard, but they couldn’t find openings and they couldn’t find chances.
“We just have to keep doing the work-rate the same. We have to be a bit more creative in the coming games.”
Liverpool created very few big chances and only forced Plymouth goalkeeper Conor Hazard into his best save in added time. The likes of Diogo Jota, Federico Chiesa, Wataru Endo and Kosta Tsimikas failed to make an impression on rare starts.
Defender Joe Gomez was substituted after only 11 minutes with what appeared to be a muscular injury. His debutant replacement, Isaac Mabaya, lasted until the 58th minute before being taken off himself.
