It remains, in the Premier League at least, the only blot on Arne Slot’s Liverpool copybook.
At the time, some saw the 1-0 defeat to Nottingham Forest at Anfield on September 14 as early evidence the transition into the post-Jurgen Klopp era was not going to be smooth. As it turns out, that game was the outlier as Liverpool have swept to the top of the Premier League and Champions League tables without losing again in either competition.
Yet still that day nags away away at Slot. At the time, the Dutchman’s remark that “normally this team (Forest) isn’t ending up in (the) top 10, so if you lose a game against them that’s a big disappointment” irritated some inside and outside the City Ground.
Slot was sufficiently exercised by the defeat that he regularly referenced Forest in press conferences in the weeks after the game, but as the teams prepare to face off tonight in the reverse fixture, the context has changed significantly: with Forest third and Liverpool top, this has the look of a title-race six-pointer.
“For us to lose on that day, for me it was hard to take,” Slot acknowledged to reporters on Monday. “Now, looking back and seeing where they are in the league, it is not such a shock result as I thought it was then.”
Liverpool’s head coach admitted he has watched the previous meeting back as part of his preparation for this fixture and The Athletic has done the same to try to explain how Forest were able to pull off the win and where Liverpool will be looking to improve to avoid a repeat at the City Ground this evening.
Team selection and tactical plan
When Forest’s teamsheet dropped that afternoon four months ago, Slot was shocked.
“It was a surprise for us that (Anthony) Elanga and (Callum) Hudson-Odoi were not playing,” he recalled, adding he’d anticipated both players being deployed to threaten on the counter-attack.
That did end up being the Forest plan, but head coach Nuno Espirito Santo began with a midfield four that included central midfielders Nicolas Dominguez and Elliot Anderson operating wider, either side of James Ward-Prowse and Ryan Yates.
Liverpool were likely to dominate possession during the match, but Forest’s narrow shape made it difficult for the home side to progress the ball through central areas of the pitch.
Key to that plan was full-backs Alex Moreno and Ola Aina winning their individual battles against Mohamed Salah and Luis Diaz to limit the threat from wide areas. And both Forest players were exceptional. Moreno won seven of his 10 duels and Aina six of nine, in stark contrast to Salah (who won two out of eight) and Diaz (two out of seven).
Liverpool had a collective duel success rate of 45 per cent, still their lowest in any of their 19 Premier League games this season, and that contributed to a lack of fluency. Forest were combative and physical — with home midfielder Alexis Mac Allister feeling the full effects of this in the first 20 minutes — and disrupted the flow of play by both winning and conceding free kicks.
Forest stayed in the game as it remained goalless, worked hard, nullified Liverpool’s threat and were able to bring on their counter-attacking threats as the play became stretched. Espirito Santo introduced Hudson-Odoi on 54 minutes, then Elanga eight minutes later and, without risking any defensive protection, increased his team’s goalscoring potential.
“They had a very good game plan, changed the wingers they normally played and then brought them on in the end,” Slot reflected on Monday. “They made the difference. I expect their wingers, who have done so well, to be in the starting XI this time.”
In his own attempts to alter what he was seeing, Slot made a triple substitution after an hour, bringing on Darwin Nunez, Cody Gakpo and Conor Bradley for Diogo Jota, Diaz and Mac Allister, with Trent Alexander-Arnold moving into midfield. But this only made Liverpool more disjointed, with Gakpo and Nunez struggling to get into the game. The latter was unable to provide an attacking focal point and touched the ball only once after the 75th minute.
A further tweak, involving a shift to a back three and bringing on central midfielder Curtis Jones for centre-back Ibrahima Konate with 15 minutes of the 90 to go, made no difference either.
The fixture was both sides’ first after the September international break and while Slot was keen to not use that as an excuse, Liverpool starters Diaz (Colombia) and Mac Allister (Argentina) looked jaded following their trips home to South America. It is something Slot has learnt from: the pair were on the bench for the club’s first games following the October and November international windows.
Liverpool’s toothless possession
Slot’s assessment of Liverpool’s attacking play in September’s game was blunt. “We hardly created any chances,” he said on Monday.
His side registered an expected goals total of 0.94, their second lowest in the Premier League this season, after the 2-2 draw away at fellow title chasers Arsenal (0.81). Despite having 69.1 per cent possession — their most in any of the 19 top-flight fixtures so far — they failed to use the ball effectively. They lost possession a season-high 149 times, 17 more than their second-highest for that metric, also in that match against Arsenal (132).
“If you play so much in their half, we need to do much better,” Slot said at the time. “We lost the ball so many times in simple situations. Too many individual performances in ball possession were not of the standards that I am used to from these players.”
Six of Liverpool’s 10 starting outfield players lost possession on at least 10 occasions. Alexander-Arnold (33) and Salah (21) were the main culprits, but two members of the midfield trio also struggled — Dominik Szoboszlai (18) and Ryan Gravenberch (12).
“We were a bit too rushed. We put the ball in the box a bit quick or overplayed it. Then you don’t get the momentum you want to get,” captain and centre-back Virgil van Dijk told reporters after the game.
When Liverpool did break at pace, the accuracy of their passing let them down.
In this first example, Szoboszlai was first to a loose ball and drove into space with the front three ahead of him. However, Jota made a run to the right (from a Liverpool perspective) of centre-back Nikola Milenkovic, while Szoboszlai passed it to the left of them.
The second example was one of the rare occasions when Salah was released into space down the right. However, his pass across to Szoboszlai was misplaced and too far in front of his Hungarian team-mate.
Defensively, Forest have excelled this season, conceding just 19 league goals (the same as leaders Liverpool and just one more than second-placed Arsenal), with the central partnership of Milenkovic and Murillo setting the tone.
“They have centre-backs that can defend the box really well, so if you put a lot of crosses in, it is not easy to score against them,” Slot said on Monday. “We experienced that at Anfield.”
Forest also deployed a strategy similar to Manchester United’s more recent tactics that earned them a draw at Anfield. There were few attempts to play out from the back, which prevented Slot’s side from pressing: Liverpool won possession back in the final third only twice — their second-lowest tally of the season behind the once it happened when United visited just over a week ago.
“They are a team that hardly concedes goals,” Slot said yesterday of Forest. “They don’t take the risk in build-up, so mostly when they lose the ball they have many players behind the ball. If they do have to defend, I see 11 players who work really hard to prevent the other team from scoring.
“That’s something we have in common with Forest.”
Counter-attacks
Slot would have been relatively happy with his side’s first-half defensive performance that day in September, which limited Forest to very little.
Liverpool’s compact shape made it difficult for their guests to launch threatening counter-attacks. Instead, they repeatedly went long towards striker Chris Wood, but when they did advance into attacking areas, they failed to register a shot on goal.
That began to change in the second half as Liverpool became more careless in possession and easier to play through.
In the opening five minutes after the break, Forest launched two counter-attacks.
First, Dominguez intercepted an Alexander-Arnold pass, creating a four-vs-four situation — although Liverpool recovered.
The second one saw Moreno dispossess Salah and drive forward. However, a favourable offside call halted that attack.
The warning signs were there, though.
Forest’s first shot of the match came in the 56th minute, by Wood and from another counter-attack, this time launched by Aina, who intercepted Szoboszlai’s pass.
The visitors’ New Zealand international front man benefitted from referee Michael Oliver playing on despite an offside flag being raised during the build-up.
Although not involved in the previous attack, Hudson-Odoi had just been introduced from the bench and Elanga came on shortly after. They combined for the game’s only goal with just under 20 minutes of the 90 to go, with Elanga delivering a pass to Hudson-Odoi, who curled an effort beyond Alisson.
A plan executed to perfection.
Set pieces
Liverpool had seven corners against Forest but did not make any count — it’s become a theme of their season, with Slot’s side scoring only twice from them in the Premier League.
In their next game three days later, away to Milan in the Champions League — a bounceback 3-1 win — Liverpool scored from a free kick and a corner and, post-match, Slot referenced the disappointment from the weekend. “We were disappointed about getting (seven) corner kicks and not scoring against Nottingham Forest, but we were very close,” Slot said. “We felt with all the work we put in on set pieces, that at some moment we should get the reward.”
Despite trying different setups and moves, Liverpool were unable to create a high-quality headed chance from any of their corners against Forest. The closest they came was when Matz Sels saved Alexander-Arnold’s delivery, which was directed on target, and when Aina cleared off the line after a scramble in the box.
On all three corners that Liverpool players managed to get first contact to with their heads, they failed to hit the target (Van Dijk, twice, and Jota once).
That typified a day when little went right for Slot and his squad. That match with Forest has been the blip in an otherwise blemish-free season; tonight, the watching world will see if they have learnt their lessons from it.
Additional reporting: James Pearce
(Top photo: Carl Recine/Getty Images)
