Pushed on what his definition of an “acceptable” season would be, Slot said: “When you are Liverpool, the aim is to win the league. We’ve only done this twice in the last 30 years. The aim is to be competitive in every single competition we are in.
“That’s always the aim, but the reality is that in the last three years we’ve won one League Cup and one Premier League title.
“What is acceptable? I have my opinion but I’m not going to share that.
“The outside world has an opinion. As we all know, a lot has been said about the £450m [that Liverpool spent in the summer], but people tend to forget the £300m we bought in.”
Liverpool are sixth in the Premier League and have won none of their past five games (D4, L1) in the competition.
“I think it’s going to be really difficult to quiet the outside noise with the position we are in in the league,” Slot said. “So even if we win a few games, every loss or every disappointing result will start the noise coming back again.
“That’s what you can expect if you started the season as we did – not started, but at a certain moment with so many losses. So it’s impossible to shut down the noise at a club like this if you are not competing for the league.”
The Liverpool boss expects a tough challenge against a Qarabag side who held Chelsea to a draw earlier in the season.
Liverpool sit fourth in the group phase entering the final round of games, with the top eight going through to the last-16 stage automatically.
A defeat could knock them out of that group of eight, so Slot wants to impress on his players the need to be wary of Qarabag’s threat. The visitors to Anfield sit 18th in the 36-team league table.
“It is always the players that make things difficult. They are very direct, fast players,” Slot said of the opposition.
“They go very direct and fast towards goal and have players who are comfortable on the ball. They have shown against big clubs that they are a very good team. Even Chelsea, they were able to keep them to 2-2.
“If you look at our Champions League this season, some clubs are lucky to face the teams who are outside and in the bottom 10. We only played one [Eintracht Frankfurt]. We did really well, but maybe it has given us some problems in the league game or two games later.”