- The Liverpool full-back insists he is loving playing for new Reds boss Arne Slot
- Kostas Tsimikas admitted the Reds took an emotional nosedive last season
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Liverpool ‘destroyed everything’ after a single bad result at the end of last season, according to defender Kostas Tsimikas, who says they have learned from their mistakes that saw them implode from a potential quadruple of trophies to ending the season with just one.
The Reds were top of the Premier League in mid-March, still in the FA Cup and Europa League – with a Carabao Cup already secured. But a 4-3 loss at Old Trafford in the FA Cup quarter-final started a bad run of games that saw them crash out of the title race and Europe.
And Tsimikas has said they ‘were not the team they were before’ after that United loss – which came via an injury-time winner for Amad Diallo in extra time – and the squad’s mentality took a significant blow going into Jurgen Klopp’s swansong run of fixtures.
‘Last season, at the end, we destroyed everything after one bad result against Manchester United,’ said the Greek full back, who got the UEFA man of the match award in Liverpool’s 1-0 win at RB Leipzig on Wednesday.
‘I think the next fixtures back in the days we were not the team we were before but I think we have tried to work game by game and every game is a final. We try to do what the manager is asking to win games.’
Arne Slot’s men have won 11 of 12 games since his arrival – the best start to a season of any Liverpool manager – and are top of the Premier League plus second in the Champions League standings on goal difference alone with a 100 per cent win record.
But Tsimikas reckons it is too early to say Sunday’s trip to Arsenal gives a chance for Liverpool to make a statement of intent to the rest of the league. ‘I think it is too early to say (it could be a statement).
‘I think we will go to Arsenal to play our football and to win the game. That is our target but we just take it game by game, to try and win and play good football. It’s too early to speak about statements but our goals at the start of the season, we said we wanted to win everything.’
Tsimikas played an integral role in Darwin Nunez’s winner at the Red Bull Arena but the win further highlighted the sturdy defence under Slot, with seven clean sheets and just five goals conceded in 12 games.
Asked what has changed, the 28-year-old said: ‘I think we defend all together now. One of the goals of the new manager is he asks us to defend all together as a unit, as a team. So I think that is the important thing. We don’t want to concede.
‘Personally, I enjoy it very much (under Slot). They work on every kind of detail and they want you to improve and it is always there for you, even the manager and technical staff, to help you do the right stuff for the team.
‘The things the manager wants from me, I am very happy to work with him. We have done some fantastic work at the AXA Training Centre and hopefully we can continue like that.
‘The manager trusts a lot of the players here. We need that after this tough schedule we have ahead of us.’
