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Liverpool's head coach stated he needed to “examine my own performance” after the Reds endured a sixth defeat in 7 Premier League games on their own turf to Nottingham Forest and insisted he would find a solution out of the title holders' poor run.

Forest, fighting against the drop before kick off, delivered the biggest win at Liverpool's stadium in their club records as the Merseyside club fell to an 8th loss in 11 fixtures in all competitions. The British record signing, Alexander Isak, was once more anonymous and Liverpool argued Murillo’s opener should have been disallowed for comparable grounds to Virgil van Dijk’s disallowed effort against City prior to the national team pause. But the manager admitted the buck stopped with him and made no excuses.

“No one wishes to hear me now speaking about refereeing decisions if you are defeated 3-0 at home to Nottingham Forest,” said the Liverpool head coach. “I ought to examine myself initially and my team, but it demonstrates you how a score can alter the momentum of a match. Before I was just hoping for us to score a strike. Later we barely created anything.

“Of course there is a way out, especially with the quality footballers we have. No matter if you win or lose when you reflect you are always considering: ‘Where can we improve, where can we make changes?’ but that is something else from doubting yourself.

“I wish to emphasise I am accountable for the current defeats. You are answerable when you are winning but also liable when you are defeated. I can never come up with sufficient excuses for us to have the results we have. That is far from good enough and I am to blame for that.”

The team's performance fell apart as Slot made multiple offensive changes when pursuing the match. “It was the same away at Forest last season,” he said. “I took Ibou [Ibrahima Konaté] out and put on the Portuguese forward and he found the net straight away to equalize at 1-1. At that time it was courageous, currently it’s probably unwise.”

Liverpool last lost back-to-back at Anfield Premier League games by Forest in the sixties. The most recent occasion they lost back-to-back top-flight games by a 3-0 scoreline was in 1965.

The manager commented: “It was extremely poor. Competing on home soil, losing 3-0 regardless of which opponent you encounter is a very, very bad result. Surprising if you look at the opening 30 minutes of the game. I did not witness us producing so much in the opening half-hour maybe the whole season, and the initial occasion they entered in our box they scored.

“It wasn’t at City, but in every other fixture we have been the controlling side and were capable to create opportunities. Recently it is nearly constantly that we fail to convert our chances and the ones we concede go in.”