The Reds could have sealed their place in next season\u2019s premier European competition but it was Villa who got over the line with a handsome victory which provided the perfect send-off for Wednesday\u2019s Europa League final.<\/p>\n
Ollie Watkins\u2019 brace and classy goals from Morgan Rogers and John McGinn guaranteed Unai Emery\u2019s men a top-five finish, while Liverpool\u2019s wait goes on.<\/p>\n
Virgil van Dijk scored twice but this was another directionless performance from the Reds as the pressure grew on Slot, who presided over an alarming 12th defeat of the season.<\/p>\n
The Dutchman accepted supporters might not find reason to be optimistic, but he is expecting a better campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can understand at this moment of time that they don\u2019t have a lot of confidence or a lot of feeling that things can be much better next season,\u201d Slot said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I think then they are underestimating what a window can do, what a new start can do, and I think we know quite well what to improve.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think one of the things we have to improve is also very, very, very obvious, and I would have preferred not to talk about it here, but you\u2019re actually almost forcing me to.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you miss nine players that can start a game of football, and almost all of them are starters for us or have been for large part of the season, then if you add that to what you can improve in a window and add that to players that are playing for the second season in the Premier League, that will automatically lead to much more.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think the differences are so big, only doing in a few situations the right thing can already have a best massive upwards possibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
Liverpool are still favourites to book a Champions League spot and it could happen in the next few days if Brighton and Bournemouth drop points, while they can look after their own business by beating Brentford on the final day.<\/p>\n
\u201cDamaging because we needed either a win or maybe two draws would have been enough as well, but now we know one thing for sure, that we need a win next week if we have to do it ourselves,\u201d Slot added.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we all know other teams, of course, need to pick a point as well for us to need a win, but it\u2019s really damaging that we were not able to get a result, let alone a win here.\u201d<\/p>\n
In contrast, Villa booked a second season in the Champions League in three years and they can now head to Istanbul for Wednesday\u2019s European final against Freiburg knowing their domestic ambitions have been achieved, allowing them to put their full focus on winning a first continental trophy in 44 years.<\/p>\n
It is another fine achievement for Villa, whose progress under Emery shows no signs of stopping.<\/p>\n
The Spaniard said: \u201cAbsolutely brilliant. I was here the first day speaking about our objective three and half years ago and how we are doing this achievement.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday is a summary for the season. Fantastic and to do it against Liverpool.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis team, this atmosphere. I am so happy, so, so proud of everybody. Now we can play the final, only thinking about a trophy, not thinking about the Champions League.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be in front of some teams after 37 matches is excellent, how we have beaten some teams to be in the Champions League.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s great finishing here the season at home with the main objective, and why, because after it we can now set and focus on the final only thinking for a trophy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Reds could have sealed their place in next season\u2019s premier European competition but it was Villa who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":451692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,5859,112],"class_list":["post-451691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-liverpool-football-club","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/451692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}