Slot: Credit to Ipswich, They Were Not Afraid

After Liverpool’s 2-0 victory at Portman Road, manager Arne Slot praised Town for their first-half performance.

The visitors improved and scored two goals in five minutes after the hour through Diogo Jota and Mo Salah. The Blues and Reds matched each other in the first half and had the best of the few opportunities in the game.

At the half, Slot made one change in personnel, starting Ibrahima Konate in place of Jarell Quansah, but he thought the squad improved overall.

As the team changed drastically from the first half, we as a team made a huge shift at halftime, Slot remarked. This was Slot’s first game in charge since leaving Feyenoord this summer.

“I must also give credit to Ipswich, though, as I believe they played all over the field one-on-one to defend us and were aggressive and fearless. After that, it’s all about winning duels and second balls, which I believe they did better than we did, which is why the first half of the match was evenly balanced.

However, we won more duels, second balls, and balls in behind in the second half because, if the opposing team chooses to play one-on-one and you have players like Luis Diaz, Mo Salah, and Diogo Jota, then make use of them.

“Play the balls in behind, and that’s exactly what we did in the second half. From there on, gaps opened up, demonstrating our ability to play with the ball well and effectively.”

He continued, “I think we lost far too many duels, not so much that we lost the balls too much during that disappointing opening period.”

They got three yellow cards for being extremely aggressive, but in a good way, and we didn’t handle that well enough, in my opinion.

I told them at halftime that if they wanted to win, they should stand up and win their duels before starting a battle, rather than settling for the fact that the ball would always land up in our 16 [penalty area] after we played a long ball.

“Ibou Konate came in and won his duels against Liam Delap, the number nine, right away, which helped us too. That gave us a lot of ball possession and two goals, though we could have scored a few

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