Liverpool avoiding Champions League knockout round more important than top spot, says Slot

Arne Slot believes that avoiding the Champions League knockout round is more important than Liverpool finishing at the summit of the new 36-team standings.

Liverpool maintained their perfect record in this year's competition with a 2-1 win over Lille on Tuesday, sealing their place in the last 16 in the process.

It is just the third time an English team has won their opening seven matches of a European Cup or Champions League campaign, with two of those being done by Liverpool (2021-22 and 2024-25 - along with Manchester City in 2023-24).

Slot also became just the second manager in Champions League history to win each of his first seven games in charge of a club, after Hansi Flick with Bayern Munich (who won the first seven between 2019 and 2021).

Despite their victory, the Reds have not sealed top spot just yet, with Barcelona's dramatic 5-4 comeback against Benfica keeping them three points behind Liverpool, ensuring that whoever finishes in first place will go down to the final matchday next Wednesday.

"If in tennis you are the No. 1 seed it is better to face the No. 24 than the 12th, but it is a ranking based on years," Slot said.

"Now we are in a new format when some teams are high in the league table because they had a lucky draw and some teams are low because they have a very difficult draw.

"It is far off to say it is an advantage to be one or two. You might be lucky, you might be very unlucky.

"For me, it doesn't tell me anything. The most important thing is we managed to skip a round."

Mohamed Salah netted his 50th European goal for Liverpool and substitute Harvey Elliot sealed the victory after Jonathan David had levelled for Lille, who had Aissa Mandi sent off just three minutes earlier.

Salah has now been directly involved in 18 goals in 15 appearances for Liverpool at Anfield this season (10 goals, eight assists in all competitions), the most by any player within Europe’s big five leagues at a single venue (one more than Harry Kane at the Allianz Arena, 17).

While Elliot's deflected strike saw Liverpool score a goal via a substitute in four successive games in all competitions for the first time since between November and December 2007 (a run of five under Rafael Benítez).

Liverpool also set a club record for their longest spell without conceding a goal in a European competition, with 599 minutes elapsing between Christian Pulisic's goal for AC Milan in the opening game of their campaign and David's goal on Tuesday.

In between, Liverpool kept clean sheets against Bologna, RB Leipzig, Bayer Leverkusen, Real Madrid and Girona, and topped the 572 minutes without conceding a goal in the 2005-06 season under Benitez.

"Very pleased," Slot said. "Where I put everything down to, first of all quality of the players and second, these players have a quality work rate.

"If you combine those two things, it is very difficult to score against the team. The nice thing for me is we keep clean sheets not by defending a lot, we keep clean sheets by attacking a lot."

But Slot insisted that patience was required against the Ligue 1 side that continued to look a threat despite going a man down in the second half.

Lille had the first shot of this game after just 25 seconds, but only managed another three during the rest of the match.

Indeed, they had more shots following Mandi’s red card in the 59th minute (three) than they did in the entire time they had 11 men on the pitch (one).

"They don't have the best players in the world (but) it is how disciplined they are, how hard they want to work," Slot said.

"We didn't force the pass, we kept the ball for as long as we could. The only thing I wasn't happy about was it was one chance for the other team."

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