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Arne Slot declared he needed to “look at myself” after Liverpool suffered a 6th defeat in seven Premier League matches at home to Nottingham Forest and insisted he would find a solution out of the title holders' slump.

Forest, fighting against the drop before kick off, produced the largest win at Liverpool's stadium in their club records as the Merseyside club fell to an eighth loss in eleven fixtures in all competitions. The British record signing, Alexander Isak, was once more anonymous and the home side contended Murillo’s opener should have been disallowed for similar reasons to Virgil van Dijk’s disallowed effort versus Manchester City before the international break. But Slot admitted the responsibility stopped with him and offered no alibis.

“Nobody wants to hear me now talking about officiating calls if you are defeated 3-0 at home to Nottingham Forest,” said the Liverpool head coach. “I ought to look at myself first and my squad, but it does show you how a score can alter the flow of a game. Earlier I was just hoping for us to score a strike. Later we hardly created any chances.

“Of course there is a way out, especially with the quality footballers we have. Regardless if you win or lose when you reflect you are always thinking: ‘In which areas can we do better, where can we adjust?’ but that is something else from questioning yourself.

“I want to stress I am responsible for the current defeats. You are answerable when you are victorious but also responsible when you are losing. I can never come up with enough excuses for us to have the results we have. That is not good enough and I am to blame for that.”

The team's performance unravelled as the coach introduced several offensive changes when pursuing the match. “It was the identical on the road at Forest last season,” he remarked. “I substituted Ibou [Ibrahima Konaté] off and brought on [Diogo] Jota and he scored straight away to make it 1-1. At that time it was courageous, now it’s probably stupid.”

Liverpool previously were defeated in two successive home Premier League fixtures against Forest in 1963. The most recent occasion they suffered back-to-back top-flight matches by a 3-0 margin was in 1965.

Slot commented: “It was very bad. Competing at home, losing 3-0 no matter which opponent you encounter is a very, very bad result. Surprising if you look at the opening 30 minutes of the match. I haven’t seen us creating so many chances in the opening half-hour perhaps the whole campaign, and the initial occasion they arrived in our penalty area they found the back of the net.

“It did not happen against Manchester City, but in every other game we have been the controlling side and were able to create chances. Recently it is nearly constantly that we fail to convert our opportunities and the ones we allow go in.”