It wasn't a rebound in his long career, but Arne Slot found some spin. His comments came on Tuesday night, after one of the most exciting halves of the season, when Liverpool left Nottingham Forest with a point and Slot suggested one team preferred a draw more than the other.
Among some healthy praise for the team he faced, here's what he had to say: “There were also many times where it was a while before the game restarted.”
When asked to elaborate, the Liverpool manager indulged: “You want as much playing time as you can, but a team that is happy with the current result wants as little playing time as possible.”
Nothing overly whiny there, but I was looking for a little detour off the wicket. Perhaps a gentle nudge to perceptions.
And he would have had some statistics in his corner, if he had felt inclined to use them: 23 shots in six for Liverpool, 9-0 in corners, 71 per cent of the ball and there was a boredom waiting for Elliot. Anderson to recover from a brush with Trent Alexander-Arnold's shoulder. After all, a 1-1 draw might not have seemed like a great return for Slot.
But I hope we know Forest a little better than that by now.
Nottingham Forest continued their impressive season with a 1-1 draw against Liverpool this week.
After the match, Reds manager Arne Slot stated that Forest were happy to settle for a draw.
But Nuno Espirito Santo's team is playing surprising and explosive football.
The idea that they were resting on what they had doesn't stand up to a review of the tape or any other memorabilia from this season: It has no legs. But Forest does. They absorbed the kitchen sinks with their faces, cut spaces, hit Matz Sels' back so hard his pucks must have shattered, and still Nuno Espirito Santo's team fought their way to the other end of the field. Repeatedly.
And that's the key here: they attacked. They came in waves. At high speed. Almost always on the counter and at levels of directness that contenders simply aren't looking for these days.
It's all there in the images, especially from that period between the 66th and 97th minutes, when it was tied. Liverpool's chances were better, more frequent, and how magnificent it is to see them in full flight.
But there were two in this dance, so let's get back to the idea that Forest was watching the clock reviewing what followed immediately after one of Sels' many saves on Diogo Jota.
Curtis Jones has collected the loose ball, on the edge of the Forest area, and that is where Nicolás Domínguez tackles it. It is the trigger for this team's strength, because nine seconds later, the game has advanced 80 yards down the field. The ball has taken a quick route to get there: one pass is made from Gibbs-White to Callum Hudson-Odoi and another goes the other way back to Gibbs-White, nine touches in total, three men. Suddenly, Liverpool are on their heels before the play breaks down in the six-yard box.
In a matter of minutes the same combination did it all again, 10 seconds from one area to another, 10 touches, right to left to right. Two more minutes and there they are once again, this time because Hudson-Odoi intercepted an attack 18 yards from his goal line and released Anthony Elanga on a chase. Less touches this time, even faster.
Once again, there is no shot, because Liverpool's defense is worthy of a title, but there was no rush to get the ball to the corner flag either. It was an end-to-end finish, or “chaos” as Steve McManaman shouted in the excitement of his commentary. And chaos is okay. Bright and unconventional chaos.
Now what we didn't see was Pep Guardiola's football. And that's really a great type of football. A football that generated 1,000 imitators and 100 lateral passes per game. The type of football that is based on possession, patience and multifaceted excellence, in which all eyes are looking for routes to close the distance from the backline. That can sometimes morph into a football version of Andy Dufresne smashing the cell wall for years with a rock hammer.
Nuno's team force their way down the other end of the pitch repeatedly throughout the matches.
They also have a magnificent goalkeeper in Matz Sels who is enjoying the best season of his career.
In attack, Chris Wood, 33, has been prolific, scoring 13 goals in the Premier League.
But that's not the forest. They use dynamite.
His football does not require pressing in prescribed areas. His style is based on choreography and precise timing, no less than Guardiola's, but if Nuno were writing this column it would be two paragraphs long. Maybe it's better for that.
It's Hudson-Odoi and Gibbs-White football, reimagined as a pair of double-barreled shotguns, Murillo as a wall, Sels moving further and further from his life as fourth goalkeeper at Newcastle. It's Elliot Anderson as the hero of all the action, 33-year-old Chris Wood, feeding off Sels' 70-yard punts and one-touch balls from midfield. One shot, one death. It's Nikola Milenkovic heading, blocking, tackling and little beyond his kicking qualities. For £12 million, Forest blindly robbed Fiorentina to get him.
As a collective, it has been amazing to watch these last few months and I have rarely enjoyed a game as much as I did on Tuesday.
It's about the beauty of differences. The beauty of different styles, different approaches, different ways of defending and attacking. That's why I have high hopes that Ange Postecoglou stays at Tottenham, but his football doesn't work like Nuno's.
There have been two thoughts surrounding Forest's promotion this season. One is the mind-blowing nature of where they are, compared to what they are supposed to be in our ecosystem. And the other is the how. How they've built a team out of unexpected talents and how they play, using a directness that doesn't have a regular place in the top three.
I tend to hate debates that reduce football to statistical analysis. But some are surprising, such as the possession figures in the eight years since Guardiola arrived in the Premier League.
The topic of his influence has been discussed at length elsewhere, as has the result that everyone now wants a bit of Pep in their game. So does Slot, Mikel Arteta, Enzo Maresca, Graham Potter and the coach whose team beat my daughter's team in the Under 11s last week.
Forest may not put pressure on teams, but behind them their work rate and desire are relentless.
They play differently than Pep Guardiola's teams do, but that's the beauty of the differences.
Well done, it's sublime. And it is equally well observed that too many great things can make life a little monotonous. But there is nothing in the recent past like the how of Nottingham Forest.
Opta provided me with some data this week showing that only 18 teams since 2016 have gone through a season averaging 40 percent possession or less per game. Seven of them fell and none of them went beyond tenth place. Allowing the other team to get close to you is often a sign of limitations.
But then there is Nuno Forest, the outlier. Without pressing, he rarely exceeds 300 passes per game, an average of 39 percent possession. They are a difference we never realized we wanted to see.
They make us think of possibilities that surely won't come to fruition at Leicester City, but at least Forest are plucking a twig and sticking it in the eye of tactical snobs around the world.
I'd never put Slot in that group, but what he saw as killing time would be better appreciated as a side that needs far less to cause fabulous explosions.
Can Chelsea keep the B team's stars happy?
It was no surprise that Chelsea slaughtered Morecambe last weekend – they have an expensive B team to handle the minor challenges of a busy season.
It's part of the strategy. But how sustainable is it to keep players happy if they know that progress will have limited rewards?
Christopher Nkunku scored in that game, giving him 13 for the season, most against minnows in the Conference League, and none of those goals have been followed by a start in the next Premier League game.
Enzo Maresca may struggle to keep B team stars Joao Felix and Christopher Nkunku happy
Joao Felix is in a similar situation, with six goals in the cups, including two goals against Morecambe, but Enzo Maresca saw no merit in unleashing his confidence against Bournemouth on Tuesday.
He was back on the bench, as he has been after all his scoring appearances. For him and Nkunku, the reason is Cole Palmer. That's difficult.
But Nkunku is set to leave this month and Felix's frustrations have occasionally bubbled close to the surface.
It's great to have a deep team, but no one wants to feed on low-hanging fruit forever.
Angry skeptics give me hope.
Tyson Fury retired this week. Nobody in boxing believed him. There may still be hope for the sport.