Arne Slot has said his new full-backs are not to blame for Liverpool\u2019s defensive issues this season but his team must improve at set pieces given their increasing importance in the modern game.<\/p>\n
Liverpool have been vulnerable throughout an otherwise impressive start to the campaign and conceded seven goals in six league games so far. Slot\u2019s side conceded two in the first six games of last season\u2019s title-winning season. The introduction of two new full backs, Jeremie Frimpong and Milos Kerkez, has been cited as a contributory factor as Liverpool adapt to the end of the Trent Alexander-Arnold\/Andy Robertson era. But Slot insists the problem is collective, and identified Liverpool\u2019s set-piece defending as in need of improvement after Crystal Palace scored from two to beat the champions<\/a> on Saturday.<\/p>\n The Liverpool<\/a> head coach said: \u201cOne of our strengths last season was keeping the other team away from our goal and normally that doesn\u2019t start with your defenders. Look into more details \u2013 we\u2019ve conceded four goals from set pieces this season. We\u2019ve changed our full-backs \u2013 we\u2019ve changed a bit more than our full-backs \u2013 but when I think about the goals we\u2019ve conceded the first thing that comes to mind is not that the full-backs are a problem.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s always a team performance. Last season we hardly conceded because 11 players worked incredibly hard to stop the other team having a chance. They are working incredibly hard this season but set pieces are a game in themselves sometimes. We have to go back to that and we have to prove in the upcoming games and months that we don\u2019t normally concede from set pieces. It\u2019s something we definitely have to improve. I see teams in the Premier League that win games by set pieces and we lose games by set pieces.\u201d<\/p>\n Galatasaray, Liverpool\u2019s opponents in the Champions League<\/a> on Tuesday, scored 24 set-piece goals out of a total of 91 last season, although that figure includes penalties. Slot, who left Federico Chiesa out of the travelling squad due to a \u201clittle niggle\u201d, believes set-pieces are becoming increasingly decisive.<\/p>\n He added: \u201cMore and more in football it is becoming a set-piece game. It is a style you see more and more, especially in the Premier League because you can do much more such as attack a goalkeeper or even touch a goalkeeper and it\u2019s not a foul. I know Galatasaray<\/a> are strong at set pieces but we have been a force at set pieces last season. We won our last Champions League game with a set-piece from Virgil [van Dijk].\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Football Daily<\/p>\n Kick off your evenings with the Guardian’s take on the world of football<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Hugo Ekitik\u00e9, meanwhile, has said he welcomes the signing of Alexander Isak despite the threat posed to his place at centre-forward by the \u00a3125m striker. The signing from Eintracht Frankfurt said: \u201cWe play in such a big club. I can\u2019t see any big clubs playing with just one striker in the squad. It is good that Alex is here. For me, at my age, I have a lot of things to improve and learn. It is good that he is here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arne Slot has said his new full-backs are not to blame for Liverpool\u2019s defensive issues this season but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8815],"tags":[748,393,4884,179,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-461641","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-liverpool","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-liverpool","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115290227563038984","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}