LIVERPOOL, England, May 9 : Liverpool manager Arne Slot played down the furious Anfield reaction to his substitution of teenager Rio Ngumoha in Saturday\u2019s 1-1 Premier League draw with Chelsea, saying the 17-year-old was having injury issues and needed to be replaced.<\/p>\n
Ngumoha was one of Liverpool\u2019s brightest sparks on an otherwise frustrating afternoon on Merseyside, with fans also booing at the final whistle as Liverpool failed to win again.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ngumoha was replaced on 67 minutes by Alexander Isak, leading to an angry reaction from fans.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“There were a lot that didn’t agree with the change, which is completely understandable,\u201d Slot told TNT Sports. “He was having problems with his muscles and when I asked him, he said he was not sure he could continue.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I knew this would be the reaction because he is such a good player. So often in football, people don’t know everything. I am the manager and I need to make decisions. Knowing why means it make more sense for people.”<\/p>\n
Liverpool might have been 2-0 up before Chelsea grew into the game as the home side conceded from a set-piece for the 18th time this season, second only to Bournemouth (19).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We started off really well and got a big chance from a set-piece which was close to making it 2-0,” Slot said. “Unfortunately, like last week (at Manchester United), we conceded from a set piece. It was such a sloppy goal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The second half I saw a completely different intensity. We went close a few times. Like so many times this season, we hit the post and bar. We were not able to control their players. They played with a lot of midfielders today.”<\/p>\n
There were more boos at fulltime as Liverpool failed to find a winner.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“That’s probably got something to do with us not winning. It completely makes sense, people are disappointed if Liverpool don’t win,” Slot said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LIVERPOOL, England, May 9 : Liverpool manager Arne Slot played down the furious Anfield reaction to his substitution…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":948772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,3943,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-948771","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116545880318413741","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948771","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=948771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/948772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=948771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=948771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=948771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}