Trent Alexander-Arnold equalised for the Reds on the hour after Youri Tielemans and Ollie Watkins had put Unai Emery’s hosts ahead at the break, following Mohamed Salah’s 29th goal of the season that opened the scoring.

Both teams then had chances to claim victory but an entertaining contest would finish level. That means Slot’s side now sit eight points clear at the top of the Premier League, although second-placed Arsenal have a game in hand.

Read every word from the head coach’s post-match press conference below.

The last thing. The only reason why we could, could, could be happy with a 2-2 is because they got the last chance of the game, maybe their third chance after scoring two. So, that could be the only reason that we would say, ‘OK, a point is good to take.’ But for the rest, I think for everything else I am not happy with the 2-2. I wasn’t happy at all being 2-1 down at half-time – that didn’t reflect, in my opinion, the first half at all. But that’s the thing in football – if you concede a set-piece things can change quite quickly.

What I saw was an unbelievable pass from Conor Bradley and what a power run from Dominik Szoboszlai, who made, in my opinion, the perfect choice to square it [as] from a one-v-one to the goalkeeper he made it an open-goal chance. Then Darwin, of course, it was not the best leg [because] he is right-footed, of course, but it was still a big chance.

Yeah, very unlucky and I was hoping that he could have got another one because a player like him probably wouldn’t miss two chances in a row and he was very close afterwards when he went towards [Emiliano] Martinez again, but Martinez made a great sliding tackle to win the ball. I think we are all disappointed but it is normal that a player that missed a chance like this is always a bit more disappointed than the rest.

I think every game has its own story. I think in terms of performance we weren’t brilliant at all at Everton but for obvious reasons we were very unlucky to come away with a draw over there. Today, I liked our performance a lot – much, much, much more than I liked our performance against Wolves – from what I like the most: playing the ball, bringing the ball out from the back, creating chances. So, no, I don’t feel like that at all. I think if you go away at Villa that’s always a difficult fixture. If you start the season you say, ‘Oh, Villa away, that’s a difficult one, [Manchester] City away, that’s a difficult one,’ so performance-wise, not a dip at all today in my opinion, but you might disagree.

And what we must not do, and have done a bit too often now, is that we don’t get what we deserve and if you look at all the chances, if you put them in a row from us and them, I think it’s clear which team should have won this game and we must not make a habit out of that because it happened a bit too much now. Still, we are eight points clear with Arsenal [having] a game in hand.

He is, but not only him. I think I could not have asked more today from all the players, they worked so incredibly hard. In a fixture list like we have with so many games, to play two difficult away games at Everton and here, [and] emotional games as well because not only the quality you face, you are also against the crowd because they are really helpful at Everton and here again as well. But Mo, yes, a great goal, although Jots [Diogo Jota] deserves a lot of compliments for that goal as well. The second one was maybe a bit lucky because it got deflected but we were there so many times in that period of time that it felt to me that we definitely deserved that 2-2 at that moment.

Result-wise, going 2-1 in at half-time, you could say it didn’t work. Performance-wise, it worked really, really, really well because we totally did not deserve to go in 2-1 down at half-time – again, in my opinion. The reason why we did this is because Lucho [Luis Diaz] played three games in seven days. I played him at Plymouth because I knew I had Cody [Gakpo] so I could switch them around if needed but then Cody got injured at Everton, he got a big knock, and then all of a sudden you have only one winger left.

So, that’s why for today we felt this could work and I felt it did if you look at the amount of chances we created and how we played the game. But result-wise you never know if you would have done it differently what might have happened but it wasn’t smart to play Lucho 90 minutes again. The same way I had to take out Jota and Trent [in the second half], both coming back from injuries. Jota hasn’t played for four or five months, it is his second start now after four or five months. So yeah, you have to take care of them, especially in a period of time where you play so many games.

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