Liverpool 0-1 Nottingham Forest
by James Nalton
at Anfield

NOTTINGHAM FOREST claimed a memorable victory at Anfield on Saturday, leaving Liverpool with a familiar problem to solve.

A goal from second-half substitute Callum Hudson-Odoi gave Forest their first win at Anfield since February 1969 in what was a solid, well-organised performance from Nuno Espirito Santo’s side.

Full-backs Ola Aina and Alex Moreno were especially impressive against Liverpool’s wide threats, Mohamed Salah and Luis Diaz, but they had plenty of support.

“We started with Elliot [Anderson] and Nico [Dominguez] playing wide, but after the defensive task — they had to do with these inside runs of the full-backs — it was impossible to ask them to play the full game,” said Nuno of the defensive contribution from his wingers.

“We knew we had to make subs and they came in and impacted the game.

“At half time, it was about trying to correct what we saw, especially when we let balls go through the middle,” Nuno added of his in-game approach.

“Van Dijk was breaking us too many times and I think we were more compact in the second half.”

Liverpool have had to learn how to break down well-organised defences before, and now it feels like they will have to do it all over again under new manager Arne Slot.

Forest also managed to neutralise Liverpool’s counter-press by going long, as pointed out by Slot.

“The only thing we had influence on in the game was ball possession,” said the Liverpool head coach.

“They played a lot of long balls so when we won the ball back we needed to go past 11 players.

“We had a lot of ball possession but only managed to create three or four quite good chances.

“That’s by far not enough. If you have so much ball possession, if you play so much in their half, you need to be much better, and we lost the ball so many times in simple situations.”

Forest deserved their win against a Liverpool side that still seemed to be working themselves out, never mind the opposition, under their new manager.