Arne Slot made it known that it was “clear the wrong decision was made” over Liverpool’s ruled out equaliser, but accepted his tactics did not work against Man City.Liverpool, not for the first time this season, were outfought on and off the ball against Pep Guardiola’s side, as an unchanged lineup failed to show the same grit as they did in midweek.Virgil van Dijk looked to have offered his side a lifeline in the first half before it was ruled out and City pressed ahead, scoring three unanswered goals to cast the spotlight back on Slot.As per FotMob, Liverpool lost the duel count 48-31, made eight successful tackles to City’s 16, and managed just one shot on target compared to their six.Speaking to reporters after the seventh defeat in 10 games, Slot conceded his tactics did not work, despite City opting to play through Liverpool rather than utilise the long ball.“It is easy for players to win their duels if the game plan and tactics are working, and they did against Villa and Madrid,” he said. “Today we struggled a lot with them bringing so many players into the centre of the pitch. It was difficult for some of our players then to make the right decisions.“It wasn’t about my players not wanting to make the duel, they had to run a lot because they were so much better on the ball than us, they were then a few times late.“I would first and foremost look to the game plan, of us and them, and not blame my players at all because in the second half, when we were doing better, you could see we were winning more duels, which did not result in a goal, but we did deserve one in the second half.”Despite Slot insisting his side won more duels in the second half, as per FotMob, it was 24-13 in City’s favour after they too won the first half 24-18.In Slot’s opinion, like many others, the decision to rule out the captain’s goal was “wrong,” but he rightly acknowledged it was not why his side lost the match.“I think it’s obvious and clear that the wrong decision has been made, at least in my opinion,” Slot told Sky Sports when asked about Van Dijk’s non-goal.“He (Andy Robertson) didn’t interfere at all with what the goalkeeper could do. Immediately after the game, someone showed me the goal that the same referee allowed [during] City against Wolves last season.“It took the linesman 13 seconds, 13 seconds to raise his flag to say it’s offside, so there was clearly communication, but as I said, that could have influenced the game in a positive way for us because in the first half we were so poor.“A set-piece can make a difference, and how we conceded 2-0 from a set piece, then that was maybe a fair reflection of the first half, by the way, us being 2-0 down.“We would have been lucky going 1-0 down at halftime, let alone if it was 1-1 or 2-1 down. So it has been an influential decision, but not to say that we then would have had a result over here, because you cannot predict how the second half would have gone then.“Because, again, it was obvious and clear that City was first half, by far the better team.”He later added: “It’s been a very good start of the week with a very bad end of the week. But City away is like, as you started this interview, for everyone, a difficult game, including for us.“We need to improve. That’s what we know. But I didn’t need this game to know this.”