LONDON — Arne Slot does not think a positive result against arch-rivals Manchester United will prove much to him or his doubters.
Three successive league victories have pushed the club to within one win of overtaking the English Premier League’s third-placed team when they meet at Old Trafford on Sunday.
Slot could become the first Liverpool boss to win his first two away league matches at United, where the team have been successful on three of their last five visits.
While that will not paper over the cracks of a terrible defence of their title, a fourth successive victory would continue the momentum the Reds have built up after an awful month in which they won just twice in eight matches from early March.
However, Slot said one good result against their arch-rivals was unlikely to prove anything to his critics. “Every week we need to prove ourselves, not only for the players, for me as well,” he said according to PA Media.
“That is not only when we play United, it’s also when we play Fulham or Palace. That is the way our lives are.
“We have to prove ourselves every three days and people judge us every three days. That is completely fair, we know this when we go into the job.
“I think it is for you guys to judge if I have been too harshly judged by many people. That’s not up to me.
“I judge my players, if they play well, if they are working hard and executing tactics. I’m not in this job to judge whether I’m criticised too harshly, that’s not the way I spend my time on a daily basis.”
The silver lining to an otherwise cloudy campaign would be qualification for the Champions League again, something which was being questioned before this latest mini-run.
Were Brighton to drop points at Newcastle, Liverpool could secure a return to Europe’s premier club competition by beating United.
They have scored 20 goals in their last seven trips to Old Trafford in all competitions but, despite scoring seven and conceding two in their last three league matches, Slot accepts the team is still not operating at the level he wants.
“I wouldn’t say a step forward, but it’s the right step to make. We know how important it is to qualify for the Champions League, for any club but definitely for our club,” he added.
“It’s an important step; it’s definitely not a step backwards.
“I think we can be on a much higher level than we are now. If you simply look at the results then we can be very positive, it’s three wins out of three (league) games, but performance-wise I don’t think it has been our three best performances of this season.
“We’ve shown already that we can play much better, but in many of these games we were very unlucky with the outcome of the game.
“In the last three games, I wouldn’t say we did not deserve to win, but we were luckier than we’ve ever been this season.
“So, this team is capable of much more, but it would be helpful if everyone is available once in a while as well and that hasn’t been the situation throughout the whole season and that’s very extreme at the moment, the number of players we are missing.”
