Arne Slot Fires Back at Alleged Liverpool Fan Unrest

The Dutchman pointed to a new solution at his disposal moving forwards.

Arne Slot has faced questions over his future. | Mustafa Yalcin/Anadolu/Getty Images

Liverpool manager Arne Slot was not impressed with the suggestion that some fans are beginning to lose faith in himself and his team, calling for patience and defending their most recent draw with Burnley which inspired so many boos.

The Reds were once again thwarted by a newly promoted opponent at Anfield, somehow conspiring to draw 1–1 with a team they dominated for so much of the contest. Slot accepted the unrest from the crowd which that result inspired at the time, agreeing that he too was disappointed with the result.

However, after a couple of days to mull over the match, Slot visibly bristled at the claim that a proportion of the fanbase are wavering in their faith.

“Do people not expect that to be possible for me? To be successful?” Slot snapped when this question was put to him by Jules Breach for TNT Sports. “It’s new to me, but if you’re one-and-a-half years in the job and have already won the Premier League, when the club has won it twice in 30 years, I’m surprised to hear that.

“But if that is the situation, then I have to accept that. I’ve tried the same things as last season this time around. Every time we’ve been a goal down, I’ve made offensive substitutions, and wherever I can, I am playing a team that is as offensive as possible.”

Liverpool's unbeaten run stretches to 12 games - does the amount of draws take some of the shine away from the achievement? pic.twitter.com/q63dFwJRZL

— Sports Illustrated FC (@SI_FootballClub) January 17, 2026

Liverpool are unbeaten in their last 12 matches, but only six of those have ended in victory. After getting burned by a helter-skelter approach at the start of the season, Slot appears to have applied the handbrake, counterattacking all the counterattacks his side were conceding by establishing a stranglehold of the ball.

“You cannot play attacking football with the amount of ball possession that we have,” Slot argued. “Sometimes, it’s a disadvantage that we have that much ball possession, because then people expect more from the ball that you have.

“But the moment you don’t have it, you have to press really high, because with a low block, you don’t have ball possession. Everyone knows what we need to do in order to make the next step in this transition phase...

“Sometimes a bit of patience is needed.”

Arne Slot

Coming back specifically to that Burnley draw, Slot argued: “A Liverpool manager, let alone the players, can never be happy with a draw at home to Burnley. But if you exclude the result, which you can never do—it was the best performance against a low block since I’ve been here.

“We registered 32 shots, we had 75% ball possession, and so I couldn’t have asked for more from my players than they showed—except for the fact that we had to score more.

“They don’t do that on purpose. We had three balls cleared off the line, we missed a penalty, so I completely disagree with people who didn’t find that game attractive. The signs were only positive, and then the week before that, we played Arsenal, where many people were happy with our performance as well.

“Add to that the fact that Mo Salah is back, and so there are a lot of positives. There’s more room for positivity than the result against Burnley gave us.”

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Slot Blames Salah Absence for Slump

Mohamed Salah (left) has endured a fractious relationship with Arne Slot this season. | Liverpool FC/Getty Images

Slot was also keen to point out that Salah did not start a single one of Liverpool’s matches during this underwhelming unbeaten run—although the first five of those were the manager’s explicit decision.

Salah is back and is now being upheld by Slot as the solution to all Liverpool’s attacking woes—rather than the defensive liability which was his role before he left. “If the fans were frustrated with the way we played against Leeds and Sunderland, I completely agree with them as we didn’t create enough chances, but what is mainly forgotten is that [was] when Mo was out,” he claimed.

“I had just one winger in our squad that’s played more than 100 minutes at Premier League level.

“Against low blocks, wingers are quite crucial. That’s why I’m so happy that Mo is back. Usually, and Mo has shown this for so many years, if we had had that many chances with Mo in the team, then it would’ve resulted in a goal.”

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