The 2025/26 Premier League season will see its 10th round of key matches, with Liverpool hosting Aston Villa at Old Trafford. Manager Sloot stated in a press conference that his team will focus solely on the immediate challenges and believes that positive results will follow if the players deliver excellent performances.

In the last round of the Premier League, Liverpool, despite conceding a goal, ultimately lost 2-3 to Brentford thanks to goals from Kelkez Milos and Salah. After suffering their fourth consecutive defeat, Liverpool currently sits in 7th place in the standings with 15 points, a full 7 points behind leaders Arsenal.

Unfortunately, Liverpool were eliminated by Crystal Palace 0-3 in the fourth round of the English League Cup, missing out on another title.

Regarding his learning and reflection during this period, Liverpool manager Sloot said, "Perhaps the real learning will come a little later, because right now the focus is mainly on 'how I can change,' because you always evaluate your decisions, choices, or actions in hindsight. Right now, my focus is not on looking back at what happened, but on thinking about how we can play a great game, so perhaps the learning part will come later."

"The focus now is on the future, on how we can get a good result against Aston Villa, or at least play a good game. Because usually, if these high-quality players play well, the result will naturally follow."

Slott pointed out, "Confidence is becoming increasingly important in every Premier League game, let alone in our games. If the game against Manchester United ends with a goal from a set piece, and then the next game against Brentford ends with another goal from a set piece just three minutes into the game, it's certainly not good for building confidence. I remember someone telling me that we needed to defend 16 set pieces in that game, and we defended 15 of them well, but we're at a stage where 15 successful defenses aren't enough because we conceded on the 16th."

We must better avoid conceding goals.

When asked if changing tactics and adopting a more defensive approach contradicted his personal philosophy, Sloot said, "That certainly goes against my philosophy, but I've won games that way before. We talked about the away game against Manchester City before, and maybe the way we played in that game went against my beliefs, but it was necessary at the time. So in some situations, I can definitely make adjustments. But in my opinion, our problem isn't that we're missing chances game after game, nor is it that we're too open, absolutely not."

“Aside from the game against Crystal Palace, where we could have been 0-2 or 0-3 down in the first half, and perhaps the game against Brentford, we deserved better results in the other games. We gave our opponents very few chances. Even in this week's game, where we fielded several players making their first appearances together, we only allowed them three real chances. But unfortunately, all three were converted. Because those weren't ordinary chances, they were excellent chances.”

Sloth emphasized, "I haven't seen us concede many chances, so I don't think there's any reason to completely change our style of play, but we definitely need to be better at avoiding conceding goals."

Furthermore, when discussing Aston Villa's situation, Sloot said, "If you don't win at the beginning, people think, maybe they're not the same team as last season, and then after they start winning, everything becomes very positive again. For us, I think it's the opposite. We have the same points, and I think apart from Arsenal, many teams have very similar points, which again shows how competitive the Premier League is."