Liverpool missed the chance to go fourth in the Premier League by drawing 1-1 at home to Tottenham, conceding a late equaliser which led to boos from the Anfield crowd
Arne Slot singled out Rio Ngumoha for praise after the Liverpool wonderkid impressed on his first Premier League start. But it wasn't to be a dream full debut for the 17-year-old forward, as the Reds slipped to a 1-1 draw with Tottenham.
Richarlison's equaliser in the 90th minute cancelled out Dominik Szoboszlai's early free-kick to end Spurs' run of sixth defeats on the spin. Despite Liverpool failing to score from opening play, Ngumoha was a constant threat.
In his 64 minutes, the ex-Chelsea prospect completed all seven of is dribbles and had seven touches in Tottenham's penalty area. Ngumoha started ahead of Mo Salah, who was named on the bench, likely with Wednesday's must-win Champions League second leg at home to Galatasaray in mind.
"I have 12-13 players that are able to bring good performances," Slot told BBC Radio 5 Live post-match. "Rio is doing that well it makes sense to play him. It is a mix of playing the ones that are fit and using the quality that these players can bring."
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The Liverpool manager also responded to boos from the home fans at full-time. "I think it's understandable for fans to be frustrated because it happened already so many times that they've seen the home team not picking up the points that they're expecting to, us conceding goals in the last minute," Slot replied.
"Now it's up to us to bring that frustration to Wednesday and come up with a big performance. Because that we are all frustrated, that's completely clear.
"And it's now up to me and the players to take that frustration into Wednesday evening and show the fans the performance and the results they deserve, because they've been supportive throughout the whole season to us. Then if it happens so many times that they are frustrated in the end of a game or after the final whistle, that makes complete sense to me."
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On the game itself, the Dutchman said: "In the large parts of the game that we were the better team, I think that is a moment where you have to score the second. I think we had moments to do so quite a lot and in the part of the game where it was more equal – the last 15 to 20 minutes – on both sides, it was waiting for one of the two teams to score.
"They created the chances all in a similar way, the four or five moments they had: long ball, picking up the second ball and then try to be a threat in moments like that. We also picked up a lot of those second balls where we were able to counter attack them.
"But from all these counter-attacks - all these four versus three, three versus two - all these moments that I felt with the quality players we have that we should be able to either get a bigger chance or when we have it, to score it, we didn't and then in the last minute we conceded the equaliser and then there's not a lot of time left to make up for it."