Ex-Liverpool star received surprise Arne Slot request 24 hours after Forest game

Gary McAllister was called upon to accept an award on behalf of Arne Slot on Sunday, while he was watching the Leeds United match against Aston Villa.

Despite being honoured as the Northern Football Writers' Association manager of the year for his work last season, Slot opted not to attend the ceremony. Instead, McAllister was sent at short notice to collect the award on behalf of the Dutchman.

As reported by the Daily Mail, Slot confirmed his non-attendance at 4pm on the day, with McAllister receiving a call during Leeds ' Premier League match with Villa at Elland Road.

At the event, McAllister – who serves as a club ambassador for Liverpool – relayed Slot's apologies for his absence, along with a brief message from the 47 year old expressing his extreme pride in receiving the accolade.

This follows Slot's recent 3-0 defeat with Liverpool against Nottingham Forest on Saturday. The Reds returned to Premier League action at Anfield, hoping to turn around a poor run of form ahead of the two-week international break.

However, what ensued was further disappointment for the Premier League-winning manager. Murillo opened the scoring for the visitors in a tense encounter 33 minutes in, with his shot from the centre of the box scrutinised by VAR due to Dan Ndoye potentially blocking Alisson Becker's view whilst in an offside position.

After thorough review, match officials determined that Ndoye had not obstructed the goalkeeper's view, and the goal stood. The Premier League Match Centre confirmed 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 seemed to double the lead to 2-0 moments later, though his effort was ruled out due to a handball during the build-up. Forest wouldn't need to wait much longer to extend their advantage, though.

Virtually immediately following the interval, Nicolo Savona found the back of the net for Sean Dyche's side, before Morgan Gibbs-White sealed the victory just over 10 minutes from time. In his post-match press conference, Slot highlighted that Liverpool's inability to capitalise on first-half chances proved crucial.

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 questioned about whether he believes he can guide Liverpool through their present difficulties, he responded: "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.

"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 encounter, Liverpool find themselves languishing in 11th position in the Premier League standings, sitting 11 points behind table-toppers Arsenal. The Merseysiders have secured just one triumph from their previous five fixtures in England's premier division.