The Reds host the Azerbaijani side at Anfield on Wednesday night in the conclusion to the league phase and can guarantee automatic progression to the last 16 with a win.
See what Slot had to say when he met the media on the eve of the matchday eight encounter…
On Andy Robertson’s future…
Robbo is part of the team tomorrow evening and he’s been part of this squad, of this club for so many years. Happy to have him, good that he’s available because that’s something that’s quite important for us at the moment – to have players available. Yeah, he will be part of the team and nothing happened from my side.
On whether Robertson is ‘definitely staying in this window’…
It’s hard to say anything definitive in this world we are in, but I expect him to stay, yes.
On what Liverpool need to achieve this season to ‘quieten the outside noise’…
I think it’s going to be really difficult to quieten the outside noise with the position we are in in the league. Even if we win a few games, every loss or every disappointing result will start the noise coming back again. That’s what you expect if you started the season as we did, not started but at a certain moment with so many losses. But it’s impossible to shut down the noise at a club like this if you are not competing for the league. What we have to improve, for me it’s so simple.
I think in between the boxes we are a very, very, very good team. The way we play out from the back, the way we bring the ball towards promising positions, the box entries we have, also against Bournemouth so many times we were in positions where I would like my players to be in. But killing those moments, bringing it from promising positions towards chances and if we have the chances then be clinical and finish it off – that is something where we have to improve. So, in the box we have to improve.
And in the other box, other teams arrive there three, four times a game [and] too many times if they arrive it leads to chances and sometimes to goals. So, there’s an imbalance in how many times we arrive in promising positions and how many teams arrive there – but there’s not an imbalance in the goals that are scored, and that’s a very bad cocktail we are having. If we can improve in both boxes, we can do very special things this season. If we can only improve in one box then it’s probably going to be an acceptable season but not more than that. And if we can’t improve in both boxes, [there is] going to be a lot of noise throughout the whole season.
