Arne Slot rewarded for patience as Liverpool keep calm and carry on | Barney Ronay

Manager’s refusal to be spooked in the face of more dropped points paved way for leaders’ late surge to victory

This was a really good game for Arne Slot. On an afternoon when Liverpool had 35 shots in 90 scoreless minutes, then won the game with their last two in added time, and when those goals were scored by Slot’s first substitute and created by his fourth, it was above all a very good game for the idea of process, control and calm intervention.

Admittedly these are not generally qualities associated with a late match-winning, mane-tossing, nostril-snorting two-goal Darwin Núñez salvo. But this was how it played out at the Gtech under Slot’s hand. Núñez doubled his league goal tally for the season. He resembled, as ever, and at all moments , a footballer being chased around the pitch by a swarm of invisible bees. He also came away looking on the metrics like a precision stealth weapon deployed at just the right moment.

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