Bruno Fernandes has lauded his former Manchester United teammate Anthony Elanga after Nottingham Forest ended Liverpool’s unbeaten start to the season.
Liverpool had won all three of their matches under new head coach Arne Slot prior to the international break and entered Saturday’s match against Forest on the back of an impressive 3-0 victory over United.
However, a 72nd-minute goal from Callum Hudson-Odoi, set up by Elanga, handed Slot his first defeat since succeeding Jurgen Klopp.
Elanga, who joined United’s academy as a teenager and made 55 appearances before leaving last summer, made a significant impact at Anfield.
Bruno Fernandes took to social media to commend Elanga’s contribution, commenting on Elanga’s post celebrating the win.
He said: “That assist man.”
After the game, Arne Slot said: “I think the only thing we had influence on was ball possession because they played a lot of long balls, so if you then take the ball back you need to go past 11 players.
“We had a lot of ball possession but only managed to create three [or] four quite good chances, so that is by far not enough if you have so much ball possession.
“If you play so much in their half, we need to do much better.
“We lost the ball so many times in simple situations.
“That is, I think, the main story from the game: ball possession not good enough.
“It is always difficult to say this, but I don’t think it had anything to do with it.
“Players came back strong and I saw today also a team that wanted to fight until the end.
“So it had nothing to do with energy, in my opinion, but we simply had the ball a lot and we had to create from ball possession.
“If you look at the goals we have scored until now, we also scored quite a few from transition moments, from winning the ball back and then going to transition.
“But the other team played over our press a lot with a lot of long balls, so like I said, we got the ball mostly in our last line.
“Then it wasn’t good enough today because also too many individual performances in ball possession were not of the standards that I am used to from these players.”
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