Liverpool manager Arne Slot brushed off suggestions his side’s 2-1 defeat to Newcastle United in the EFL Cup final was the product of fatigue following their penalty shootout loss to Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League.
The Reds were favourites to claim their first trophy under Slot, who has overseen an outstanding first season in charge since taking over from Jurgen Klopp, with Liverpool 12 points clear of Arsenal at the top of the Premier League.
But they were undone by a superb performance from Newcastle, who took a 2-0 lead through goals from Dan Burn and Alexander Isak before Federico Chiesa pulled one back in stoppage time.
An underwhelming Liverpool display came five days after they let slip a first-leg lead over PSG in their last-16 tie, a pulsating second leg eventually going all the way to penalties, in which Gianluigi Donnarumma shone to send the Ligue 1 leaders through.
Liverpool looked bereft of energy at Wembley, but Slot would not cite fatigue as a factor, instead pointing to a direct approach from Newcastle that manager Eddie Howe admitted he had kept close to his chest when the two sides met at Anfield last month as the main reason for his team’s demise.
“Mentally is always difficult to judge,” Slot told reporters when asked if his side were tired.
“Were we on Tuesday mentally or physically tired? No, but this game had nothing to do with running, this game had only to do with playing duels.
“And there was no intensity in terms of running in this game at all, we cannot even judge it if we were tired physically, yes or no, because we could not press them.
“You can judge a team if they are tired if they press, but there was nothing to press because they played over our press.
“If they got a goal-kick or free-kick, every time they brought it to our last line which led to a lot of set pieces.
“So the game was slow and not intense, so it’s difficult to judge, for me, if we were physically ready. Mentally, that is a difficult one.
“If you look at the result and the performance you might feel it [the PSG game] did something to us, but I prefer to look at how the game went, and this game went exactly how they wanted it to be.
“A fight with a lot of duels, and a lot of duels through the air, and if we played 10 times a game of football through the air against them they win probably nine times as they are stronger in the air than us.”
Liverpool will have time to get over the disappointment of this week, with an international break allowing them the opportunity to regroup ahead of the Merseyside derby with Everton on April 2.
On whether that break had come at a good time for his team, Slot said: “We are one of the biggest clubs in the world, Liverpool. But it’s not for the first time in their history, or in the last two seasons, that they’ve lost two games in a row.
“This is part of playing football, especially if one of them is when you face the best team in Europe at the moment, and the other one is facing Newcastle, which is a very strong team in England.
“I would’ve loved to play next week. But now the situation is they go to their national teams, where they have two more games again. Then it’s probably one-and-a-half weeks before we face Everton, which is again a team we already faced. We know how difficult that one was. Let’s see.”
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