Liverpool players fired up by quality competition, says Slot

Liverpool’s squad revel in the competition that quality players bring, so says Arne Slot.

The Reds ran riot to beat West Ham 5-1 in the EFL Cup on Wednesday, teeing up a fourth-round meeting with Brighton.

Slot, who has won all but one of his seven matches in charge of Liverpool, made plenty of changes for the tie, and though his team fell behind, they responded in emphatic fashion.

Diogo Jota scored twice to turn the match on its head, with Mohamed Salah slamming home a third before West Ham capitulated following Edson Alvarez’s red card – Cody Gakpo netting a late double.

And Slot believes his players are only charged up by the competition within the squad.

He told Sky Sports: “Players like to play, especially if you’re winning. They like to be part of a winning group.

“You know if you play at Liverpool, you play with quality players. It fires them to get the best out of each other.”

Finishing off a lovely team move ‍ pic.twitter.com/tbP10xb8tD

— Liverpool FC (@LFC) September 25, 2024

Liverpool finished with 2.55 expected goals (xG) to West Ham’s 0.57, getting 21 of their 11 shots on target and creating six big chances.

Reflecting on his side’s display, Slot said: “If you’re facing a team like West Ham, with a lot of quality, you know they can threaten you as well, they scored from a set-piece, they threatened us from set-pieces. Every [Premier League] team has quality players, it’s never as easy as the scoreline shows.

“In the end, we got numbers in our own 18-yard box, we did it really well.

“I do feel we had control. We had a large part of the possession, we had a few chances before we made it 3-1 through Mo, which was a great team goal, and he was so eager to score that he played the ball across and then followed the run and scored a great goal, then it was Cody time.”

Gakpo had a team-leading six shots, and Slot was thrilled with his compatriot’s performance.

“He deserved that, like the others deserved it as well,” the Dutchman added.

“It was good to see – Cody has such a fantastic shot, we have to get him in those situations. Apart from that, he had an important clearance in our box, that’s what I like to see – quality with the ball, work rate without the ball.”