Arne Slot says he was unfairly shown a yellow card by referee Anthony Taylor during Liverpool’s 2-2 draw with Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium.
The Dutch head coach was booked for dissent midway through the second half after becoming frustrated at the hosts’ attempts to “take the energy out of the game” by going down for treatment.
Liverpool trailed 2-1 at the time but hit back to earn a point through Mohamed Salah’s late equaliser. Slot’s second yellow card of the season leaves him just one away from being hit with a touchline ban.
“Last time, I said I completely deserved the yellow card (against Chelsea). This time I don’t think I did,” Slot said.
“So many times they were on the floor, which can happen in football, I don’t blame them for that. But they always fell down after they had ball possession and that took the energy out of the game in my opinion.
“I said to Ibou Konate, ‘This is a ****ing joke.’ The fourth official (Sam Barrott) thought I said to him: ‘You are a ****ing joke.’ That’s definitely not what I said. I got a yellow for that so now I’m on two and I have to be careful.”
Slot was delighted to secure a share of the points after a much improved second-half display against Mikel Arteta’s side.
“Going two times behind against a very strong Arsenal team, to get a point is pleasing to see, especially as we played away in Europe this week and had one day less to recover and prepare,” Slot added.
“We came back so strong in the second half after deserving to be one goal down at half-time.
“If you face Arsenal, with a manager who has been working here four or five years and has done an incredible job, his team can play in so many different set-ups.
“They always play 4-3-3 but the way they position themselves, I think he said himself once they can do it in 40 different set-ups.
“You prepare a game plan, but you can’t tell your players 40 different options. We could prepare them a bit better for the second half with what we had seen in the first half.
“We took some more risk but the main thing was we put more energy into it. We pressed them more aggressively. You saw also we could keep going where they had to take a few of their quality players off.”
(Alex Pantling/Getty Images)
