Arne Slot reveals half-time message vs Southampton - I had to create anger

Arne Slot admitted Liverpool's first-half performance against Southampton was a "warning sign" as he had to "create anger" in the dressing room at the break.

Trailing to Will Smallbone's added-time goal after a misunderstanding between Virgil van Dijk and goalkeeper Alisson Becker, Slot - who was watching from the Main Stand as he was serving the last game of his touchline suspension - moved quickly to rectify the situation.

Having issued his players with an order to increase the tempo, he made a triple substitution with Harvey Elliott, Andy Robertson and Alexis Mac Allister coming on and immediately changing the dynamic.

Within the space of five minutes, Darwin Nunez and Mohamed Salah, with the first of two penalties, had turned things around as the Premier League leaders stretched their advantage at the top to 16 points ahead of their Champions League second-leg clash with PSG on Tuesday at Anfield.

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Slot told Sky Sports: "It was a very poor performance in the first half. Maybe if you see the highlights you would feel there were three or four chances, but we were not in the game at all and it didn't come to a surprise to me that we conceded a goal. Especially if you look at the way we conceded it, it tells you all about our first half.

"We found a way to win the game in the second half.

"In the media, in my meetings, I made clear to them how difficult of a game this was and that we have to play on different intensity levels than we've played against Paris Saint-Germain. Maybe also to get used to that level of intensity that we're going to experience Tuesday again. But in the end I had to make some hard decisions, maybe at half-time, to create a certain anger with the players.

"That triple substitution at the start of the second half seemed to reignite the team. The three that came in did really well. That's the first thing, but I could see from the other eight a different attitude as well.

"So if you look at the first goal, we played the ball to Diaz and all of a sudden he was on tempo trying to create something, where in the first half he kept the ball waiting, waiting, waiting and that was not only for him, but in general.

"And in the second goal you could see Ryan Gravenberch pushing up, winning the second ball which led to the penalty, where in the first half they could every time escape after we crossed the ball.

"I'm fully aware of the fact that if you play a season, you cannot play 38 times in the highest intensity or the best possible football you can play. So sometimes you have to find another way of winning a game.

"But the first half today is hopefully a warning sign because like I said, we've experienced it already in Paris, that the intensity, the way they play, was very high for us on that night. And if I compare it with the intensity we played today, it's not one, two, three, four, five steps, it's probably six or seven or eight steps down towards the intensity levels of Paris Saint-Germain."

(c) Sky Sports 2025: Arne Slot reveals half-time message vs Southampton - I had to create anger