Arne Slot Says Barnsley FA Cup Win a Better Result Than Performance

Story byNoel ChomynTue, January 13, 2026 at 2:43 PM UTC·2 min readBy the time the final whistle blew on Monday night’s Third Round FA Cup tie, Liverpool had secured a quite comfortable looking 4-1 victory over League One’s Barnsley. For those watching the match play out, though, it perhaps hadn’t seemed quite so comfortable. After scoring on a pair of quite spectacular—and quite unlikely to lead to a goal, statistically—efforts and then conceding a quite comical goal against, the Reds had sat on their 2-1 lead for most of the match before scoring a late pair to make things at least appear comfortable. AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAt the end of the first half, though, it was the lower league side visiting Anfield that had created more goal scoring opportunities as measured by expected goals, and even if Liverpool held more of the ball, they hadn’t created any actual clear cut chances with that possession.“A good win—but that’s not the performance, it’s the result,” was manager Arne Slot’s take, acknowledging both that it was a good win by the final scoreline and with the Reds through to the Fourth Round of the FA Cup and that, well, the performance was at best alright.“We wanted to go to the next round and we did that with four beautiful goals. All shots from outside the box.