Arne Slot has outlined the task Liverpool face in Nottingham on Tuesday as he insisted high-flying Forest are genuine title challengers.
Liverpool are six points clear at the top of the table with a game in hand at the halfway stage but Slot, the club’s head coach, has warned the biggest hurdles are still to be cleared and is mindful of the threat Nuno Espírito Santo’s squad pose.
Forest are the only team to have beaten Liverpool in the Premier League this season - they won 1-0 at Anfield on September 14 - and if they were to do the double over the league leaders, it would have a significant impact on blowing the race to become Champions wide open.
But Slot, who will be without the suspended Darwin Nunez and hamstrung Joe Gomez, is adamant Liverpool will not be cowed by the occasion and is looking forward to see how they cope after a difficult week in which they drew with Manchester United and lost to Tottenham in the Carabao Cup.
‘I have always said you can judge the table best halfway through the season and that moment is there now,’ said Slot.
‘Forest is up there with Arsenal, Chelsea, City, us and the others so they are definitely a team in competition with us and the others and they deserve to be treated like this if you look at the way they play and the results. It is going to be a very difficult challenge.
‘They already showed in retrospect how good a team they are, leading up to that game they had two draws and one win. In general every time Liverpool loses a home game it is something we don’t expect. I also saw a stat Virgil van Dijk played 100 home games and only lost once. For me it was hard to take. For me, looking back now it is not such a shock result as I thought it was then. They had a very good game plan, changed the wingers they normally used and brought them on in the end.
‘I said you can judge the league table better but we also know in the second half of the season teams improve, some bring players in in the January window, in general if a manager works longer with a team sometimes the team plays better. We have to improve and it is a good way of judging the league table but it is still a long way to go with us 19 games to go and the rest 18.’
This is a significant period for Liverpool, as three of their next four Premier League games are away - at Forest, then Brentford and Bournemouth - with a home date against Ipswich sprinkled in between. Slot will need all his big guns firing, not least Diogo Jota, who wore the captain’s armband against in the FA Cup dismissal of Accrington on Saturday.
‘Jota is a hard worker, what you see on the pitch as well, tries to become a better player every single day,’ said Slot. ‘He is a player that is good in both parts, good when he is attacking but works really hard as well. That is modern football. When I played you could be a no 10 like me and didn’t do much without the ball. Jota is an experienced player, that is one of the reasons he wore the armband. Let’s hope he stays fit.’
