Liverpool head coach Arne Slot has said his team cannot afford to underestimate anyone despite their growing lead at the top of the Premier League table.
Liverpool are four points clear of second-placed Chelsea having played a game less following Sunday’s commanding 6-3 victory over Tottenham.
Slot’s side have lost just one of their 16 matches in the league this season and will look to continue their impressive form when they host struggling Leicester City at Anfield on Boxing Day.
Ruud van Nistelrooy’s team are 17th in the table, with just three wins from 17 league games this term, and go into Thursday’s clash off the back of a bruising 3-0 defeat to Wolverhampton Wanderers.
However, Slot has insisted Liverpool will have to be at their best if they are to get the better of Leicester and has promised that his side will not allow complacency to creep in as they continue to challenge for the club’s 20th league title.
“I think the positive is that teams that are positioned in the lower side of the league table, they mostly lose games but since Ruud is there, they also won a few so that shows you that he’s done really well, especially when he came in,” Slot said told a pre-match news conference.
“Now he had two tough results in a row. These teams, all of them, it’s special to go to Anfield and they know if they go to Anfield, they have to be at their best so they will never underestimate us.
“Hopefully that’s the good thing about the 15 minutes we saw against Tottenham [when Liverpool conceded two second-half goals], that we understand we cannot underestimate for one minute in the Premier League.”
The clash with Leicester will not be the first time Slot has come up against a team managed by Van Nistelrooy, with the former Manchester United forward having been in charge of PSV Eindhoven while Slot was head coach of Feyenoord in the Eredivisie.
The Liverpool boss was very complimentary about his countryman when asked to assess his managerial career to date.
“Cody Gakpo was in his team [at PSV] so I’m happy that he’s in my team now when we face Ruud,” he said.
“Ruud is a very nice person, first of all. I met him once or twice and I think he did really well when he was at PSV because, for the last one-and-a-half years, they’ve been on top of the league table but if you look at the second half of Ruud’s season, I think they didn’t even lose any games at all.
“When he was working there, Cody Gakpo and Noni Madueke were sold. But he still showed that he could compete for the title. Nice person, good manager, did well at United as well. I’m looking forward to seeing him, especially if we win.”