“I inherited a great team”. Slot speaks out on debut win at the helm of Liverpool

Liverpool's head coach Arne Slot spoke at the post-match press conference following their 2-0 victory over Ipswich in the first round of the Premier League.

"I have to give credit to Ipswich because they were aggressive and fearless all over the pitch. They won more second balls and duels in the first half, which is why the score was level. In the second half, we won more duels and played the ball behind. When teams take the risk of playing one-on-one, and when you have Luis Díaz, Mo Salah, and Diogo Jota, we needed to use them - and we did that better in the second half.

I told them at halftime, if you want to win here, you have to win your duels and make it a battle. Ibu [Konaté] helped us as he immediately started winning his duels against their No. 9, which gave us possession - we should have scored more than two goals.

This wasn't the first time in nine years that Liverpool played well. I inherited a really good team with great players. The players need to understand that what they did in the first half wasn’t enough. If they play to their full potential, they can be really good. It was nice to see how we scored the goals," said Slot.

Interestingly, with today’s victory, Slot broke an unfortunate streak of his predecessors at Liverpool. The Dutchman became the first Reds manager in the 21st century to win his debut Premier League match in charge of the club.