Arne Slot press conference: Full verdict on Liverpool 2-2 Man Utd

On whether recent speculation affected Trent Alexander-Arnold...

I don’t believe in those things. I think nine out of 10 people will tell you it affected him but I am one of the 10 that tells you I don’t think that affected him. What affected him was that he had to play Bruno Fernandes and Diogo Dalot, who are two starters for Portugal. Great, great, great players. We have a fantastic player here with Diogo Jota and mostly he is not playing for Portugal. That tells you how much quality United have and if these players set themselves to a game, and that is what United once in a while do, then it is very difficult to play against them. That is more difficult for Trent to play against Bruno Fernandes and Diogo Dalot than the rumours there were during the week. That’s my opinion and probably everybody will tell you it had to do with the rumours. My opinion is different.

On Alexander-Arnold coming up against those two players specifically and ‘why he was left in that situation’…

No, it wasn’t that he had to play them on his own, against those two, because Ryan [Gravenberch] was nine out of 10 times close to that situation. But he was many times faced in a one-v-one situation against those players. Now, I always tell you how difficult it is for the other team to be in a one-v-one situation against Mo Salah or against Cody Gakpo, Lucho Diaz or all the other ones we have. These players also have special qualities; I think the best way you could see this was the last 10 to 15 minutes. In the first 70 to 80 they almost played every ball long, but after the 2-2 the game was completely open and then you could even see even better how much quality they have if they try to play the ball over the ground. It was clear that Trent had some difficult moments, as we as a team had, but that is also for Trent not the first time. I think for the majority of the games he played for this club, they were very, very, very good, but I can’t believe if people tell me that he’s never played a bad game for this club. That has probably happened before, and I think mostly against quality players like United have, especially in the positions he had to face.