Arne Slot saluted his Liverpool players for a battling performance that saw them come through one of the toughest assignments of the campaign with a 2-0 win over Bournemouth to go nine points clear in the Premier League title race.
The Reds scored a penalty from Mohamed Salah after Cody Gakpo
had gone down inside the area before the hosts launched a second-half onslaught that saw Alisson Becker make a number of important saves to keep the clean sheet. Salah scored a sublime second inside the final 15 minutes to ensure the Reds emerged from a difficult away-day with the points ahead of Arsenal's visit from Manchester City on Sunday.
"It was [a real battle] as expected," Slot said. "So I said before the game, that after our home game when we were 3-0 up at half time, the way they came after us in the second half, I already knew what a great mentality this team has and from that moment onwards they have done so well in the league.
"They have picked up so many points in the league against good teams and not by luck but because they are intense, they have quality and that is why we knew it was always going to be really hard.
"And if you want to win here, maybe you need a bit of luck as well. Because the margins are so small. Our penalty was just not offside and their goal for 1-1 was on a margin for offside. They hit the post twice and we had our chances as well but it was a close call for us to win this game.
"Only a few [games] have been as tough as this and that is what I have told them before that in all the data when it comes to running, Bournemouth are so high up in the list.
"So we knew that if we had any chance of a result we at least had to compete with them in the running, the fighting and the duels, all these things.
And I think that is what the players did today. And having Mo Salah definitely helps in a game like this."
Slot added: "Almost every game feels like this for me and so many of our games have been exciting until the end. There were a few moments this season when I thought we were just not on the right side, the points we have until now, we deserve them.
"Only thing I can say - and I haven't seen it back - is that one of my players is on a clear one-v-one with the goalkeeper, and he is falling down. So either he makes a dive or they touch him. And if they touch him it is a penalty for me. This was such a clear one-on-one chance that, yeah, if he touched him - which I assume he did, otherwise VAR would have intervened.
"I can come up with three, four or five examples when we didn't get the luck we deserved or we didn't get the decision we deserved. But that is always the difficult thing in football, if there is one in your favour people will always say it is the luck for Liverpool or the one who is No.1 at the moment.
"For me, it has nothing to do with luck, it is a clear one-v-one, and I can tell you if Cody Gakpo goes one-on-one with the goalkeeper, it is quite a big chance as well. If you are then tripped, it is a penalty and it is not that it is a penalty from a little push at a set-piece and it wasn't even a chance."
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