Liverpool head coach Arne Slot could not escape constant taunts from Nottingham Forest supporters at the City Ground on Tuesday night.

The Premier League's leaders were in town to face Nuno Espirito Santo's high-flying team. The mood was lifted even further when Chris Wood struck past Alisson in the eighth minute to hand Forest a healthy lead.

And that would mark a period of the match lasting almost an hour until Diogo Jota's equaliser in which the hosts were on top of Liverpool. Especially throughout the first half Forest faced few tests of character, and that may have been in part down to Reds coach Slot being allowed no silence to gather his thoughts.

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Throughout the contest, the home supporters could be heard singing: "We're in your head, in your head, Arne Arne Arne-Ne-Ne," to the tune of the chorus for Zombie by The Cranberries.

The deeper meaning behind this goes all the way back to match week four of the current Premier League season. A historic away win for Forest at Anfield to this day remains the Dutchman's only league defeat since arriving at Liverpool.

He expressed utter disappointment with losing to a team that 'normally is not ending up in the top 10', then in the weeks after - if not months - it seemed Slot would refer back to the defeat in his press conferences as if frustrated.

Reflecting on the early-season result on Monday, Slot did admit: "I think they already showed in retrospect how good of a team they are. Leading up to that game I think they had two draws and one win.

"In general, I think every time Liverpool loses a home game it is something we don’t expect.

"I think in that moment of time I also saw a stat that Virgil played 100 home games for Liverpool and only lost once, so for us to lose on that day was, for me, hard to take, as you probably experienced.

"Now looking back at it and seeing where they are in the league, it’s not such a shock result as I thought it was back then."

He even went as far to agree that Forest are title contenders this season, even if Nuno did not take to the suggestion.

Slot also referenced Forest's spending when asked about comparisons to the Reds and his AZ Alkmaar side of 2019-20, who were title challengers to the mighty Ajax in his native Netherlands.

"What I maybe underestimated was their spending," Slot said. "They have spent more money than us in the last three years.

"You know if you spend so much money you will have good players, and then you need a manager who brings that out of them. "That is what Nuno is doing great at the moment."