Arne Slot believes Liverpool need to produce their best performance of the season so far if they are to overcome Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League Round of 16.
The Reds hold a slender advantage in the tie entering Tuesday night's second leg at Anfield, following the 1-0 win they earned in the French capital last week.
Slot previewed this latest encounter by attending a press conference on Monday – read on for the best bits from it...
On whether he was surprised by the quality PSG demonstrated in the first leg...
I wasn't surprised at all about their performance. They've impressed me a lot. Before we played the game, I watched many games of theirs because we had a bit more time than normal and I was really impressed with the intensity they play at, the team cohesion, the rotations in midfield. They are such a complete team, such a well-managed team and I think we experienced this last Wednesday. Some people said we played poor, I don't agree – I think they played tremendously well. I don't think we've faced this season a team that combined that much quality with that much intensity. But I do think we can do better. I am not saying we played poor or not good at all, but we are a better team than we were last week and that's something we have to prove tomorrow with the help of our fans.
On whether Liverpool need to produce their best performance of the season...
Yes, I do think so because this is the most complete team we've faced so far. What I mean by complete – and OK, we've faced Arsenal and [Manchester] City and it's not that there are big margins – but the intensity they've played at combined with the quality they have... they have so much quality and a great, great, great manager. He lets the team play in a way that is not easy to play against his team; he brings the best out of every player and he brings an incredible work-rate into the team. That's why I think we have to be at our best tomorrow. But, for example, we didn't have ball possession at all at City away but at home we had a completely different performance against City than we did away.
On whether this is Liverpool's most important game of the campaign so far...
Yes, because it's the next one. Because it's the next one and the next one is always the most important.
On how key retaining possession will be in this game...
Of course we are hoping that we will have more of the ball than last week. But again, if you saw them playing, they are very intense when they don't have the ball, which led to them creating a few chances as well because they took the ball away from us when we had build-up. But in the 87th minute when the ball was with Alisson [Becker], they moved forward with a lot of players, we played it long and they were open, where we could score our goal. When I watched the game back, I saw many moments that if a few of our players would have done better then that could have led to us creating chances. I also know from my experience, because normally my team is doing what Paris Saint-Germain is doing, that every other manager always says, 'We could have done better in these transition moments.'
But the thing is, they did exhaust us a bit more than I wanted with them constantly pressing us. If you then get the ball, sometimes you're a bit too tired to make the perfect execution, and that's why it would be useful for us to have the ball a bit more. If we have the ball a bit more, hopefully the game opens up also a bit more for us. We know we can do better than last week but I don't agree with people that said that we had a poor performance, because I do feel you don't give the right credit to the team that deserves that credit, and that's what Paris Saint-Germain deserved last week. They were incredible last week.
On the approach to take and whether he sees it as a lead to defend...
We try to play every game [to] try to win – that's also what we tried to do last week. It wasn't our intention to be so low all the time. We wanted to have a different game than we played over there but sometimes the other teams, with the help of their fans, we both saw what happened. Tomorrow we want to play a different game but our intention is always the same. We're not going to go for a draw.
We just want to win every single game and we want to have the ball as much as we can – at City away that wasn't the situation, at Paris Saint-Germain that wasn't the situation. We do take our confidence from the home game against City, where we did have the ball much more and it was much more of an equal game than it was in the away game at City. And, of course, everybody is writing about 27 shots and that's also what I saw. But if you put all 27 shots in a row, it's not that all 27 were amazing saves of Alisson – he had two or three incredible saves but most of their shots were from outside the 18-yard box.
On whether he allows himself to dream in a week like this as a head coach...
No. In a week like this, you don't dream at all. You just know you have to work really, really, really hard to prepare the team in the best possible way, and that's what I try to do for every single game. But if you had a game like we had last week, you feel like, 'Can I even go to sleep or do I have to watch even more?' No, I don't dream at all at the moment about this week. We are just very focused on what we need to do tomorrow. The week started off, in terms of a result, really well on Saturday [by] beating Southampton and now we are looking forward to tomorrow, because I think everyone looks forward to a game of football like this – at Anfield, two great teams playing against each other.
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