Arne Slot insisted he wasn’t concerned about Jarell Quansah being dismissed late on as a much-changed Liverpool held on to beat Southampton
Arne Slot insists he wasn’t concerned about Jarell Quansah being sent off late on as a much-changed Liverpool held on to beat Southampton 2-1 and reach the last four of the Carabao Cup.
With the Saints pushing for an equaliser in the closing stages, Mateus Fernandes went down under a challenge from last-man Quansah on the edge of the box only for referee Simon Hooper to wave away the claims from the home side as goals from Darwin Nunez and Harvey Elliott did the damage despite Cameron Archer’s second-half effort.
Asked if he was nervous at the time, Slot claimed he didn’t think it was a foul and said he watched it back to have his view firmed up by replays.
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“The moment the ball is over the top you’re not nervous,” Slot, who watched the game from the press box due to suspension, said. “But the moment you see two players colliding into each other is that the way to use it?
“Then you always wonder what the decision might be. In real time I thought he could have made a different choice. But then I saw it back and I felt that he just used his arm. For me it wasn’t a foul. But you never know with referees decisions, do you?”
On the much-changed team, Slot added: “It would be normal if I play with all the regular starters that we have a better team than we had tonight. Otherwise, I make every week the wrong decision, which is maybe a possibility.
“But we also trust these players because we know how much quality they have. So that’s the first reason to play these players, that we have a lot of confidence in them as well.
“Second of all, it’s not about a result on Sunday. It’s more for the long-term fitness of the players that we made the decision that the ones that played so many minutes to give them a bit of rest during this week because the schedule is going to be intense again in the upcoming weeks.
“And for the ones that have played a lot, only 45 or 60 minutes, and the ones that haven’t played a lot, play 90. So that’s what we did, and good for us that it was enough to win it.”
