Liverpool has new coach on Arne Slot bench after Dominik Szoboszlai admission

Arne Slot has made a change to the coaching staff that surround him on gamedays, and there has been a promotion for set-piece analyst Lewis Mahoney following Aaron Briggs' exit

Dominik Szoboszlai celebrates after scoring against Marseille(Image: Getty Images)

Arne Slot has promoted set-piece analyst Lewis Mahoney to his bench on game days after Liverpool sacked set-piece coach Aaron Briggs last month.

The Reds have made a marked improvement when defending set pieces, having not conceded a goal from a set piece in any of the six games since Briggs' exit; across the previous 18 games, Liverpool had conceded 12 goals from set pieces.

Liverpool also seemingly saw the benefit of its analysts' work at the other end of the field on Wednesday night, as Dominik Szoboszlai opened the scoring in the 3-0 win Marseille with a free-kick that he placed underneath the wall.

“I got told that if no one is lying down then maybe I can have a chance to hit it under the wall,” Szoboszlai told TNT Sports in a post-game interview. “No one was lying down, so I tried it and it worked out!”

Mahoney only joined Liverpool from Southampton in September, and in recent games he has been seen alongside Slot and his coaches on the bench, rather than up in the stands with other analysts, where he was usually previously situated.

Meanwhile, Liverpool head coach Slot expressed the win over Marseille that he saw the response that he wanted to see from his team following the weekend's disappointing draw with Burnley.

"I can say it one more time, having a draw at home against Burnley is not the standard of this football club," Slot said. "But we've created three or four times more chances against Burnley than we did tonight, but we scored one and tonight we scored three.

"Even tonight, we created quite a lot of chances, by the way. Against Arsenal (the 0-0 draw earlier in January) we played a very good game. Against Burnley, in my opinion still and everyone can disagree, we played a very good game."

Goal-scorer Szoboszlai added: “It’s [a] very good [result], I’m very happy. It’s really tough, we knew it before, especially with this team, with this coach [Roberto De Zerbi].

“We know what they are able to do and what he is able to do, we saw it in the Premier League when we played against Brighton [& Hove Albion]. But we knew, we were prepared and we take the three points.”