Arne Slot maintains Nottingham Forest remain threat to Liverpool in title race
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Arne Slot doubled down on his claim that Nottingham Forest are Premier League title contenders after Diogo Jota headed in an equaliser with his first touch in an entertaining draw. Slot has predicted Forest will rival Liverpool to be champions if they keep key players fit. Liverpool lead Forest, up to second, by six points but also have a game in hand on Nuno Espírito Santo’s side.
Forest are the only team to have beaten Liverpool in the league this season, at Anfield in September. Asked about Forest’s chances of gunning for the title, Slot said: “I don’t think they’re up there because of luck. They have been very hard and difficult to play against for every team. They’ve already had a few difficult away games, [Manchester] United away, [Manchester] City away, playing us twice.
“It shows you they are a team that can compete at the top end of the league. I think they have had most of their players until now available for the whole season, I almost always see the same lineup and that is a quality for their coaching staff. If they can keep the same players on the pitch, I see no reason for them to drop a lot of points because they are a difficult team to play against.”.
The Liverpool manager introduced left-back Kostas Tsimikas and Jota midway through the second half, in place of Andy Robertson and Ibrahima Konaté, and the pair immediately combined at a corner to cancel out Chris Wood’s first-half strike. Slot conceded he was pleasantly surprised by the super-sub nature of his decision. “We brought an attacker [Jota] in for a defender [Konaté] just to play even more attacking football than we were because we needed a goal, goals,” he said. “Scoring from a set piece was not something I had in my mind when I brought them in. But Jota can score a goal and Kostas is good at set pieces.”.
