Arne Slot press conference: Brighton cup win, Gakpo form, Jaros display and more

On the performance of Vitezslav Jaros, both in terms of his key saves and with the ball at his feet…

I like the last part you say because everyone could see how important his saves were. I think the first big chance of the game was for them, where he saved one-on-one, and in the second half, of course, we also remember one or two saves. But he also added how comfortable he was with the ball at his feet: making the right choices about when to go short and when to cut the ball to the striker, helping him with the quality Jarell Quansah and Joe Gomez brought in. construction. So I liked a lot of that triangle today in possession.

On what he saw from Dominik Szoboszlai and Curtis Jones after opting to start without a recognized center forward…

Yes, I think they did (what I asked). If you play those two without a No. 9, you’re always a bit worried about whether you have enough running behind the back line because those two also like to play into the midfield and do combinations over there, to make triangles over there . But I think what they did really well was combine, try to be an extra midfielder, but don’t forget to make the deep runs as well.

And it helped that Luis Diaz and Cody Gakpo were also a constant threat at the back, so overall I liked what I saw. I prefer to play with a No. 9 but if they are not available – and of course we had Darwin (Nunez) available but I don’t think it was good for him to start today after playing three games and with the upcoming program – then the result was what we tried to come up with and the players did really well, in my opinion.