After Liverpool FC’s commanding 3-0 win away at Marseille, head coach Arne Slot had special praise for one player in particular, our longest-serving player, Joe Gomez. Marseille headed into this game as the top goalscorers in Ligue 1, but the Reds were hardly troubled by the French outfit in an assured defensive display, and Slot credited much of the performance to Gomez, who stepped up in the absence of Ibrahima Konaté:
“The one I want to take out [and highlight] is Joe Gomez because he hasn’t played a lot in the last one and a half years. He suffered sometimes from injuries, sometimes I didn’t play him when he was fit. A few times when he played were moments in League Cup and FA Cup. Tonight he had an outstanding performance with an important role in our 3-0.”
The win moved Liverpool up to fourth in the Champions League table, with their place in at least the play-off round confirmed before the Marseille game due to results on Tuesday. A win against Qarabag next week at Anfield will guarantee Liverpool a spot in the last sixteen of the competition.
Slot remarked on the execution against Marseille, noting the difficult atmosphere:
“You know it is always very difficult to play against Marseille because of the passionate fans they have and the quality of the players. What makes it even harder is they have such a good manager, who always lets his team play so well. We were prepared for that. I think in the first half you could see we took the ball three or four times off them in very promising situations, but we couldn’t find the player that was completely free. We were in four versus three situations a few times and the one time we did find the player, it was fractionally offside.
“On the ball, I think we were controlled – although I maybe better not use that word because it has been [misinterpreted] a few times lately – but we could find players in between the lines, we could bring our attackers into promising positions. It took a while before we scored the second because I think we had chances earlier on to score the second. The thing that was different for the first time this season than all the other games was that the moment we were having a big chance to score the 2-0 that hit the post, 10 seconds later they had a big chance. Usually this season this ball goes in and we’re all complaining, but now the ball went over, and we extended our lead to 2-0 and 3-0. The performance is still the same but the perspective of how people probably talk about us is completely different.”
Job’s almost done, one more win.
