Arne Slot bemoans injury woes and fixture schedule as Liverpool lose at Brighton

Liverpool boss Arne Slot pointed to key injury absentees and a swift turnaround from Champions League commitments to explain a damaging 2-1 Premier League defeat at Brighton.

The Reds’ hopes of returning to European football’s premier club competition next season suffered another blow after a Danny Welbeck double inflicted their 10th loss of a dismal title defence.

Slot was without goalkeeper Alisson Becker, forward Mohamed Salah and club-record signing Alexander Isak at the Amex Stadium, while top scorer Hugo Ekitike limped off inside eight minutes.

Liverpool arrived in Sussex for a lunchtime kick-off having reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League on Wednesday evening by completing a 4-1 aggregate win over Galatasaray at Anfield.

Defeat left the reigning champions with only one point from the last nine available after they conceded late goals in a 2-1 loss at bottom club Wolves and last weekend’s 1-1 draw at home to relegation-threatened Tottenham.

“Brighton away, that’s a difficult game for any team, especially if you miss out on a few very influential players,” said Slot.

“Of course now, looking at the league table, this loss hurts a lot and it should hurt us a lot.

“But the main problem we are in this position (is) because we dropped points at Wolves in the last minute with a deflected shot (and then) a week ago (against Tottenham) – not a week ago, because we had to play on Sunday, not on Saturday, and then on Wednesday and Saturday, not as all the other Champions League teams.

“The goal last week in the 90th minute is a bigger problem than losing away at Brighton.”

Following Welbeck’s 14th-minute opener, Liverpool levelled through Milos Kerkez before conceding the decisive goal 11 minutes into the second half.

“What went wrong started off with the lead up to this game,” said Slot.

“As so many times has happened this season, when we played a very good game (a 4-0 second-leg win over Galatasaray) and we thought we could bring that level to the next game, or even better, we had Mo Salah injured, we had Alisson injured and, after two minutes, Hugo Ekitike out.

“That has happened to us so many times this season and what happened to us a lot this season is that the first chance of the other team immediately went in.

“But in the second half Brighton were the better team and deserved to win.”

Slot is confident Ekitike will return swiftly from a dead leg sustained in a collision with James Milner, while Alisson requires further assessment.

Match-winner Welbeck is enjoying his greatest goal-scoring season after taking his tally to 12 in the Premier League and 13 overall.

The 35-year-old’s form has fuelled talk of an England recall, but he was left out of Thomas Tuchel’s latest squad on Friday.

Brighton head coach Fabian Hurzeler said: “It’s not on me to judge this decision. The only thing I can say is that I said afterwards to Danny Welbeck, ‘control the controllables’, and that’s what he did today on the pitch.

“He created his own record by scoring his 12th goal. The media will go hard on this, but besides that for me even more important for a team is how he functions as a connector.

“He’s always there to connect the different ages. To connect the different cultures we have in our team. To be there as a social leader. If you want to achieve something in a World Cup that’s an attitude that definitely helps.

“We keep pushing him, we keep trying to support him and hopefully one day he gets the rewards for what he’s doing on and off the pitch.”