Slot laments poor performance levels from Liverpool stars

Liverpool manager Arne Slot with Luis Diaz during the Premier League match at Anfield.

Arne Slot admitted that too many of his stars were below par after he suffered his first defeat as Liverpool manager at a stunned Anfield.

Slot's hopes of winning his first four games in charge as well as becoming the first manager in Premier League history to start with four clean sheets were shattered by Callum Hudson-Odoi's superb 72nd minute winner that earned Nottingham Forest their first win in Liverpool's backyard since 1969.

Liverpool enjoyed plenty of possession but didn't do enough with it, according to a disappointed Slot.

He said: "Too many individual performances were not good enough. We had a lot of ball possession but only managed to create three or four good chances. 

"We lost the ball so many times in simple situations. That is the main story from the game, our ball possession was not good enough."

Slot refused to blame the international beak for breaking Liverpool's momentum - this defeat coming off the back of their impressive 3-0 demolition of Manchester United at Old Trafford.

He added: "I don’t think it [the break] had anything to do with it. Players came back strong and I saw a team that wanted to fight from the end. We simply had to create more from ball possession. If you see the goals we scored before today, a lot of them were from from transition. We had the ball mostly in our last line today and it wasn’t good enough.

"It is a big setback, if you lose a home game it is always a setback. You never know if they [Forest] will go all the way to fight for the Champions League this season but normally they are not in the top 10 so that is a big disappointment, although they were structured well today."

Meanwhile, Forest boss Nuno Espirito Santo celebrated his first-ever win as a manager over Liverpool.

The former Wolves and Tottenham boss said: "I'm very happy of course. Many of our fans in the stadium, they were not even born when the club last won here so that tells you how hard it is to get something at Anfield. I'm proud of the players - they worked very hard. Overall, we knew how tough the game was going to be. It is a all about taking your chances.

"You always want your substitutes to make an impact and Callum and Anthony [Elanga] certainly did that, combining so well for the goal."