The Reds head to Villa Park on Wednesday night for their rescheduled Premier League encounter with Unai Emery's men.

Slot previewed the 7.30pm GMT kick-off by attending a press conference at the AXA Training Centre on Tuesday morning.

You can see the best bits from the head coach's session with reporters by reading on…

I see it as 13 games to be played and the next game to be the most important one, starting with Villa away – which is, like Wolves at home, again a difficult game for us but for everyone. They have a great home record, maybe even more if they play in the evening, so we know that it is going to be a challenge. But we have quite an OK away record as well this season, we've done quite OK this season in general as well. So, it's a game I think for everyone to look forward to, to see these two sides playing against each other.

I think Villa away, when you get the fixture list, you all know that Villa away is one of the tougher ones you can face. But last season was also a very interesting game with it ending 3-3, if I remember correctly. So, [a] very good manager, always has a very good game plan. They brought in quite a lot of good players in the winter break as well and they already had a very good team. They qualified for [the] top eight in the Champions League, so it tells you that it's a strong team we are going to face. But that's what I started with, Wolves at home was also tough for us, so every game in this period of time for every team in the league is difficult.

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I think it is because we're coming to the end of the season and not because of us but because of what people make of it. Because we've played more games at home or away that we led by one goal and in the end it was also tight. So, I can remember Crystal Palace away, where it was really tight in the end and Vitezslav Jaros had to make a big save to secure the win, and we didn't even need a big save now to secure the win. If then this happens in the end of the season, people – you guys – are going to talk about nerves. But to secure a win in the Premier League if you are only leading by one goal, there's always going to be a lot of defending and a lot of hard work. During large parts of the season, it's just hard work. And in the end part of the season, we talk about nerves – not me but a lot of people talk about nerves.

I think it always helps if you have experienced it already – and that's not only for me, that's also for the players. But it's difficult to take things from that period of time towards this period of time – different players, different opponents, different league. But it tells you – what I've said so many times – that in the end phase of the season, a lot, a lot of games are really, really tight – it's not only ours. I even saw yesterday Barcelona, which is a team I admire a lot and play really good football this season, but in the end they were close to conceding the 1-1. It is the end phase of the season where results like this are quite common, like in our title-winning season with Feyenoord as well. It tells you that you have a team that fights until the end and these games you have to win if you want to achieve something.

I think Wata has been really useful for us this season. It's not always a matter of how many minutes you play, you can be very important in two minutes and less important in 90 minutes. What makes Wata special, in my opinion, is every time we have to rely on him – if it's five, 10, 20 or 25 minutes – he shows up. That sounds much more simple than it is because if a player has hardly had a lot of playing time then to be mentally so strong that if the team needs you, you can bring your best performance in – that is not always easy. Because mostly you see players that don't play a lot find it difficult to get their rhythm or their quality in the less playing time they get. The only thing is defending is always more easy than creating. So if a player who hasn't played for a long time and he has to create something, it is always more difficult than defending. He's been important for us and he will be important for us in the upcoming weeks as well.

We lean a lot on the players because we train with them, we try to prepare them. I give them a pre-match meeting to try to prepare them in the best possible way. But from that moment onwards, you lean on the players. How much work-rate do they want to put in, how well do they execute the game plan, do they adapt to what the other team does? So, yes, you always adapt on players and I think it helps you if a team or a player has already won something, but don't make that too big because you still have to play for it. You can't compare the circumstances.

So the ones that won the league already, that was in corona[virus] time without fans being in the stadium. They were, if I am correct, at a certain point 25 points clear, so you can hardly talk about pressure then! Although, I am the type of manager that if there are 10 games to be played and I am 25 points clear, I still feel like we have to win two! But there's hardly any pressure then. We do lean on the players because they have to show up and they have to bring the performances in. Not in the manner that they are today, tomorrow or whatever day presenting a meeting on how to deal with the pressure – that's not how it works.

A role like many others. He'd done so well before his injury and, I think I've said it during the weekend, I couldn't even remember when his last start was for us in the Premier League. I think we've missed him for three or four months because it was Chelsea in October, that's a long way back, so we've missed the No.9 that played in the first seven or eight games every single one for almost three or four months. Now he is back. He played 60 [minutes on Sunday] and with a decent amount of games we play now, you don't expect him to play 90, 90, 90 in the upcoming three, but he will be involved in hopefully all three and hopefully with a lot of minutes as well.

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