Liverpool manager Arne Slot has said Paris St-Germain (PSG) were the better team in their first leg of the UEFA Champions League round of 16 on Wednesday.

According to him, Liverpool were lucky to have survived the onslaught delivered against them by the stars in PSG.

Slot said this during a post-match conference despite his side winning 1-0, thanks to an 87th-minute effort by Harvey Elliot at the Parc de Princes.

He was quoted by Liverpool website, "I think if we had a draw over here we would have already been lucky, that’s clear for everyone. I think they were the much better team today, especially in the first half, they had a lot of open chances – three or four big, big, big chances. In the second half they were still the better team, still had a lot of shots on target, but they were mainly from outside the box. But I knew before the game, and I saw again today, how much quality this team has and these individual players have.

"So, all these shots from outside the box were with a certain speed that you only see with top players. We have them as well but you could see it with them as well [and] that’s why Alisson still had to make a lot of big saves. We were lucky in the first half that the goal [Khvicha Kvaratskhelia’s disallowed effort] was fractionally offside… and in the end, we were already in the game three, four or five times. I felt like, ‘We can hurt them in transition,’ but we didn’t. But we waited until the last moment and then we hurt them."

Slot had words of compliment for Elliot but noted that the forward would have to struggle for a regular start due to the calibre of players at the club.

"A big moment for him. I can understand that he is sometimes frustrated by the playing time he gets because he is a good player, he showed at Liverpool already that he is a good player, but he is in competition for players that I hardly take off. So, Dominik Szoboszlai is always the one that just keeps on going, he also scores goals but he’s so important for us with all the running he does. And yeah, Mo Salah is I think is quite key for everyone as well. So, he has to do it with limited playing time but he just keeps on going.

"I have to give him big compliments for that and also my staff because they keep working with him and every time come up with great exercises so he stays fit. But it wasn’t only Harvey, it was also the one who assisted, Darwin Nunez, who came from a difficult two games but was absolutely there again tonight because from the moment he came in we were more of a threat than before," he said.

ASA