Anfield witnessed a forgettable clash devoid of clear-cut chances but a moment of magic in the 83rd minute lit up the game and left jaws on the floor.<\/p>\n
Szoboszlai followed an impressive display as Liverpool’s makeshift right-back with a spectacular 30-yard free-kick that flew home in front of the Kop and sealed a 1-0 win.<\/p>\n
“We’re not perfect,” Reds boss Slot said. “We weren’t perfect last season, by the way.<\/p>\n
“But, still, what you can see is a great mentality, and everybody wants to work so hard to get a result over the line.<\/p>\n
“Then you need a little bit of luck, which we had in Newcastle (on Monday) and today.<\/p>\n
“I think it was Michael Jordan who said ‘the harder we work, the more luck we get’ and that is something that you can say about this team.<\/p>\n
“They work incredibly hard, and there will be moments in the season where we work just as hard and we don’t find the luck of scoring a goal. But we always give ourselves a chance because we work so hard.”<\/p>\n
Liverpool boss Slot was proud of his players efforts, with Szoboszlai naturally picked out for praise.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think he changed at all in the last few games compared to what he did last season,” he said.<\/p>\n
“He’s always been the player that I think understands what a Liverpool player should look like.<\/p>\n
“If you wear this shirt, you should give everything, no matter in what position you play.<\/p>\n
“As a midfield, he’s always the first one to track back, to press high, and today, I don’t think he did anything wrong.<\/p>\n
“Unbelievable game from him in the position he probably played only two or three times in his life, so it tells you a lot about the mentality he has.”<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Liverpool confirmed Greece full-back Kostas Tsimikas will spend the remainder of the 2025-26 season on loan at Serie A side Roma.<\/p>\n
As for Arsenal, Mikel Arteta hit back at the suggestion he set up his side to avoid defeat rather than seal a first league win at Anfield since 2012.<\/p>\n
“We didn’t do our game plan to frustrate them, we did it to win it,” the manager said.<\/p>\n
“I think we elevated the game and the dominance to a point that they have to raise it.<\/p>\n
“They did, especially from the 60-78 (minutes), when then you could see that there were no margins in the game and then when that happens the game is going to be decided in two ways.<\/p>\n
“One, with an individual error and two, with a magic moment.<\/p>\n
“So, they created a moment that was incredible, that has won the game and that was the difference. Nothing else.”<\/p>\n
Arteta was forced into an early change at Liverpool, with key defender William Saliba replaced by Cristhian Mosquera after just five minutes.<\/p>\n
“He twisted his ankle during the warm-up,” the Gunners boss said.<\/p>\n
“He came in and he said he believed that he could carry on and play but straightaway in the first two actions I could see that he couldn’t cope and we had to get him out, unfortunately, but thank God we have Mosquera.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anfield witnessed a forgettable clash devoid of clear-cut chances but a moment of magic in the 83rd minute…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35825,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[2725,18,19,17,1534,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-35824","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-arsenal","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-liverpool-football-club","13":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}