Arne Slot has hailed Liverpool defender Jarell Quansah as being ‘back to his old level’ after a ‘hard time’ this season.
Quansah was not in the starting line-up as the Reds beat Wolves 2-1 on Sunday afternoon at Anfield, but came on at half-time.
Ibrahima Konate started alongside Virgil van Dijk at centre-back but after the Frenchman received an early yellow, and came close to a second soon after, he was was taken off at the break.
The 22-year-old replaced him and, although he didn’t keep a clean sheet, Slot was impressed with the young defender, as he has been for some time in training and in matches.
Quansah has only started two Premier League games this season, one of which was the first game of the campaign when he was replaced himself at half-time.
Slot admits that change set him back, but likes what he has seen from him recently.
‘I think all the boys showed great character, great mentality in the second half,’ Slot told a post-match press conference. ‘But I think everybody has seen recently already, because he’s played a few games recently, that he did really well. I see in training sessions that he’s back to being the same Jarell as he was in pre-season.
‘I think that he had a bit of a hard time after being taken off at Ipswich and then the first two or three games after that when he came in were also a bit of a struggle.
‘He’s just showing now what he’s been showing in the last two or three months on the training pitch but also when he comes in that he’s back to his old level.
‘Then you can see how important he is. Again, you saw today how vital players like Jarell and Wata [Wataru Endo] also are for this team.
‘If you want to achieve something of course you need the goals from Mo and Luca and all the others, but you also need these players that if you depend on them, they bring up performances like this.’
Liverpool looked to be on course for a comfortable win when Luis Diaz and Mo Salah put them 2-0 ahead before the half-time break.
However, a brilliant Matheus Cunha goal on 67 minutes made for a nervy finish and Slot said his players were a bit deflated despite the victory.
‘When the boys came in, I felt like they were a bit down maybe, a bit like it wasn’t our best performance,’ he said. ‘That probably tells you also how well we’ve played during the season – that we weren’t even that happy with this win. I said to them, this win is maybe even a bigger accomplishment than outplaying Tottenham here [and winning] 4-0 because in a season where you want to achieve something – no matter what you want to achieve – you need to play good football, that’s the basis of success, but if you don’t have the mentality to win difficult games then you will never achieve something.
‘That’s why I was so disappointed for the players and so frustrated when I was in the dressing room after the game when we played Everton. The boys did so well, fought so hard and deserved, in my opinion, to go away from there with 2-1, not in terms of football but in terms of mentality. But we didn’t get that one and now we got it today.’
