Liverpool 'rung up Arne Slot's replacement' while he watched Leeds vs Aston Villa

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Gary McAllister was called up to accept an award on Arne Slot's behalf on Sunday, just as he was watching Leeds United's clash with Aston Villa . Despite winning the Northern Football Writers' Association manager of the year award for his endeavours last season, Slot decided not to attend Sunday's ceremony.

Instead, McAllister was sent to accept the award on the Dutchman's behalf on very short notice. As per the Daily Mail , Slot confirmed that he would not be attending the ceremony at 4pm on Sunday, with McAllister receiving a call halfway through Leeds' Premier League fixture with Aston Villa at Elland Road.

During the event, McAllister – who is a club ambassador for Liverpool – shared Slot's apologies for failing to appear, as well as a brief message from the 47-year-old who was 'extremely proud' to have won the honour. It comes as Slot oversaw a 3-0 thumping for Liverpool at the hands of Nottingham Forest on Saturday.

The Reds returned to Premier League action at Anfield with hopes of turning around a dismal run of form ahead of the two-week international break. However, what ensued was further misery for the Premier League-winning manager.

Murillo opened the scoring for the visitors in cagey fashion 33 minutes into the clash, seeing his strike from the centre of the box examined by VAR as a result of Dan Ndoye seemingly obscuring the view of Alisson Becker in an offside position. After review, however, officials deemed that Ndoye was not in the line of vision of the shot-stopper, allowing the goal to stand.

The Premier League Match Centre wrote on X: "The referee’s call of goal was checked and confirmed by VAR – with it deemed that Ndoye was not in the line of vision of Allison and did not make an action that impacted an opponent."

Igor Jesus then seemingly made the score 2-0 moments later, although his strike was ultimately ruled out as a result of a handball split seconds before he buried the ball. It didn't take Forest long to double their lead.

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Almost immediately after returning from the half-time break, Nicolo Savona found the back of the net for Sean Dyche's side, before Morgan Gibbs-White sealed the deal just over 10 minutes from the full-time whistle. Speaking during his post-match press conference, Slot highlighted that Liverpool failed to take their chances in the first half, which ultimately proved particularly costly.

He said: "How bad is difficult to measure, but it was very bad, of course. Playing at home, losing 3-0, no matter which team you face, is of course a very, very, very bad result. Unexpected if you look at the first half-hour of the game.

"In my opinion, a good start from us. Haven't seen us creating so much in the first half-hour of a game maybe throughout the whole season - I'm not sure because I don't remember every single game now, but we were able to create a lot.

"And the first time they arrived in our box, they scored a goal and it's a very difficult cocktail to drink, or to have. If you miss out on your own chances, then almost every time you concede one the ball goes in."

When asked if he believes he can lead Liverpool out of their current slump, he added: "It's my responsibility. Win or lose, it's my responsibility. But what I also I see is that the team, and our fans as well, stay until the end, support until the end, and the players keep on trying until the end.

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"And what I also see today, and that wasn't at [Manchester] City - but at City we were not the only team that struggled in the first-half - but in every other game we've played, we've been the dominant team and we were able to create chances. Like I said, lately it's almost constantly that we miss our chances and the ones go in that we concede, but that will never continue throughout the whole season.

"But we need to have that moment of energy of scoring a goal. If you are playing well and you go 1-0 up then the other team feels like, 'We've played here half and hour now and we're 1-0 down, and we've hardly seen the ball.' But the opposite thing happened, they got a big, big, big energy boost from scoring 1-0.

"I see a lot of things where in a 'normal' situation the result would have been different, but we are now in a difficult situation and then you need to do even more to get your results in than when things are going in your favour."

Following Saturday's result, Liverpool languish at 11th in the Premier League standings, 11 points off league leaders, Arsenal . They have just one win from their last five outings in the English top flight.

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