Slot happy with ‘on track’ Liverpool as pre-season comes to a close

Liverpool head coach Arne Slot says he is happy with where his team are at heading into the first Premier League game of the season.

The Reds beat Sevilla 4-1 in their final outing at Anfield before facing Ipswich on opening weekend with several first-team regulars getting a start.

Diogo Jota, Luis Diaz and 17-year-old Trey Nyoni got on the scoresheet on Merseyside, with the likes of Virgil van Dijk, Alisson Becker and Trent Alexander-Arnold all playing.

And while Slot says he has seen lots of good things during pre-season, he admitted things never go fully to plan.

He said: “Ideally we would have had them from the start, all of them.

“Then, players like Virgil [van Dijk] and all the others that went off after 60, 70 minutes could have played the whole game.

“But I am pleased, if you look at the situation. These players had to go to a holiday, a lot of them came back really strong.

Thank you for your brilliant support yesterday, Anfield ❤️ pic.twitter.com/pGyJGS01o7

— Liverpool FC (@LFC) August 12, 2024

“And the ones I had from the start stayed fit for all the time. Yeah, pleased with the fitness level the team has, and also without injuries at the moment, and that is an important thing in pre-season.

“We have to improve day by day. I think we saw today in both games a lot of good things but I can make a big list also of things we have to improve, which is completely normal.

“Some of them with the certain new ideas we have, have only been [working] with this for a week so they have to adjust to that, they have to adjust to each other maybe with these some new ideas.

“So it’s normal that we are far from perfect, but even being far from perfect we can score four, so that’s a good start.”

Slot got his first taste of the Anfield crowd and was made to feel welcome by the noisy Liverpool support.

The former Feyenoord boss immediately compared it to his old team, suggesting that he is used to performing in front of passionate fans.

He added: “That’s always nice, no matter which team you lead. Always if you play a home game it’s always nice.

“If you lead a team with 15,000 fans it’s nice; if you lead a team with 50,000 it’s even nicer; and if you lead a team that has 60,000 fans that are also constantly behind the team, similar to my former club at Feyenoord, those are always games to look forward to, and I got a taste of it today.”