with his tactical approach rather than the players, as Liverpool head into November’s international break sitting eighth in the table.
The reigning champions suffered their fifth loss in 11 league outings, with Erling Haaland, Nico Gonzalez, and Jeremy Doku all finding the net in a dominant display from City.
Slot stuck with the same lineup that defeated Real Madrid 1-0 at Anfield in the Champions League on Tuesday, but after consecutive wins that began with a 2-0 result over Aston Villa last Saturday, the visit to the Etihad proved too much, and the manager acknowledged his team were outplayed.
“It’s easy for players to win their duels if the game-plan and tactics are working,” Slot said. “What I did against Villa and Madrid, we struggled now a lot with them bringing so many players into the centre of the pitch.
“It was difficult for some of our players then to make the right decisions. It wasn’t about my players not wanting to make duels, they had to run a lot because they were so much better on the ball than us. Our players were then sometimes too late.
“I would look to the game-plan first and foremost of us and them and not blame my players at all.
“In the second half when we were doing better you could see could us winning much more duels. Then we were more than a few times able to win the ball, which didn’t result in a goal for us.
“But in the second half we definitely deserved a goal.
“Of course, everyone is disappointed. It was a very good start to the week, winning against Villa and Real Madrid, but if you’ve already faced two strong opponents, and then you have Man City coming at the Etihad, that is always difficult for every team, including us.
“They were by far the better side in the first half.”
Slot added: “They were in every aspect of football better in the first half. I saw a lot of similarities between last season and this season with one main difference in that after we struggled a lot in the first 25 minutes we scored a set-piece.
“And that changed the game, City kept on outplaying us but it did us to find some energy to keep defending well.
“Last season they didn’t create that many chances, today they created more but it wasn’t like they had chance after chance after chance, but this time they were much more effective with the chances they had.”
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