Arne Slot Reveals What “Surprised” Him About Darwin Nunez as Liverpool Half-time Message Shared

Darwin Nunez provided the assist for Mo Salah’s equaliser during Liverpool’s 2-2 draw with Arsenal.

Arne Slot shared insights into the message he delivered to his Liverpool players at half-time, aiming to secure a valuable point against Arsenal.

Liverpool had to fight back twice at the Emirates Stadium to claim the 2-2 result. The team struggled in the first half, allowing Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka to find the net within nine minutes.

Although Virgil van Dijk equalised for Liverpool nine minutes after, Arsenal regained their lead through Mikel Merino just before the break.

However, Liverpool improved significantly in the second half, ultimately drawing level in the 81st minute as Mo Salah coolly finished, marking his 163rd Premier League goal and moving him into joint-eighth place on the all-time scorers list.

When asked by Sky Sports about his half-time instructions, Liverpool manager Slot responded:

“The thing is if you face Arsenal with a manager that is working here for four or five years and he has done an incredible job here because his team can play in so many different set-ups.

“They always play 4-3-3, but the way they position themselves they can do – I think he said it once himself – 40 different set-ups. I don’t know what he exactly said, but it is many different set-ups.

“So, you prepare a game plan, you expect something but you cannot tell your players 40 different options, so you try to prepare them in the best possible way.

“Now they play with a false nine, which they do maybe more often, but they didn’t come that many times with a full-back inside. We could prepare them at half-time a bit better from what we saw in the first half; we took some more risk, but I think the main thing was we just put more energy into it.

“We pressed them more aggressive from the start and I saw that we also keep going where they had to take a few of their quality players off as well because they couldn’t go on and maybe that helped us in the end a bit as well.”

Darwin Nunez, starting up front in place of the injured Diogo Jota, assisted Salah’s equaliser. Although Nunez had a challenging first half and didn’t register a shot throughout the game, Slot was thrilled with the Uruguayan’s contribution, as he broke through Arsenal’s defense to set up Salah’s goal.

Slot was also somewhat surprised that Nunez managed to complete the full 90 minutes, considering his limited playing time this season.

Slot added: “The last thing is also the reason I [kept] him on, because if you just keep on going and I see you’re fit enough to keep competing. Also, after speaking about Ibou [Konate] that is almost what also surprised me [because] Darwin hasn’t played that much yet.

“To then play three games in a row with the difficult fixtures we had, an away game in Europe and then to be so fit in the end of the game… I took Curtis [Jones] out against Leipzig because that was what I was a bit afraid of: is he ready to play two in a row?

“But with Darwin, in my opinion, I have no choice because he is the only available striker at the moment. To see how hard he worked was really pleasing.

“Yes, he had to play deep in the first half but that had not so much to do with the game plan, but with the quality of Arsenal in the first half because they dominated us, without creating that many chances.

“They also needed set-pieces for the second goal and to threaten us, whereas the first goal was, of course, great individual quality of Saka.”

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