Arne Slot reveals his honest thoughts on Nottingham Forest as Liverpool face tough trip against Premier League high-flyers at the City Ground

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 that the biggest hurdles are still to be cleared and is aware of the threat Nuno Espírito’s side Santo forms.

Forest are the only team to beat Liverpool in the Premier League this season – they won 1-0 at Anfield on September 14 – and if they were to do the double against the league leaders it would have a significant impact on spoiling of the race. to become wide open champion.

But Slot, who will be without the suspended Darwin Nunez and the paralyzed Joe Gomez, is confident Liverpool will not be intimidated by the occasion and is looking forward to seeing how they cope after a difficult week in which they drew against Manchester United and lost to Tottenham. in the Carabao Cup.

“I have always said that it is best to assess the table halfway through the season and that moment has now arrived,” said Slot.

‘Forest are up there with Arsenal, Chelsea, City, us and the others, so they are definitely a team that competes with us and the others and they deserve to be treated that way when you look at the way they play and the results . It will be a very difficult challenge.

Arne Slot insisted Forest are title contenders ahead of Liverpool’s trip to the City Ground

‘Afterwards they already showed how good the team is. Leading up to that match they had two draws and one win. Every time Liverpool lose a home game it is something we don’t expect. I also saw a statistic. Virgil van Dijk played 100 home games and lost only once. It was difficult for me to accept. For me, looking back on it now, it is not as shocking a result as I thought at the time. They had a very good game plan, changed the wingers they normally used and finally brought them on.

‘I said you can judge the rankings better, but we also know that teams improve in the second half of the season. Some bring in players in the January period. When a manager has been with a team longer, the team sometimes plays better. We need to improve and it’s a good way to assess the rankings, but it’s still a long way to go with 19 games to go and the rest 18.”

This is an important period for Liverpool as three of their next four Premier League games are away (at Forest, then Brentford and Bournemouth) with a home game against Ipswich in between. Slot will need all his big guns, not least Diogo Jota, who wore the captain’s armband during Saturday’s FA Cup dismissal of Accrington.

“Jota is a hard worker, you can see that on the field, he tries to become a better player every day,” said Slot. ‘He is a player who is good in both respects, good in attack, but also works very hard. That is modern football. When I played you could be a No 10 like me and you didn’t do much without the ball. Jota is an experienced player, which is one of the reasons he wore the armband. Let’s hope he stays fit.’