Liverpool boss Arne Slot believes Nottingham Forest deserve to be in the title race after his side were held to a 1-1 draw at the City Ground.

Forest hit the front inside 10 minutes as Chris Wood slotted home his 13th goal of the campaign and deserved their lead heading into the interval after Liverpool failed to register a shot on target.

Forest looked like they would close the gap to the league leaders to just three points until Diogo Jota headed in from a corner by fellow substitute Kostas Tsimikas just 22 seconds after the pair were introduced.

Forest had goalkeeper Matz Sels to thank for their share of the spoils after he made a string of outstanding second-half saves to hold Liverpool to a second successive league draw.

But Slot does not think Forest will drop a lot of points between now and the end of the season.

He said: “After 20 games you can judge the table much better than the first five to 10 games and I don’t think they’re there because of luck.

“It’s so hard for everyone to play against, they have already had some difficult away games and it shows you they are a team that can compete with the top end of the league table.

“I see no reason for them to drop a lot of points, because they are a difficult team to play against.

“We only conceded one (counter-attack) here today in 98 minutes of total domination.

“Being 1-0 down here and it’s so hard to score against this team, it’s not what we wanted, we wanted three points.”

Slot admitted he did not think the impact of Tsimikas and Jota would be so instantly dramatic.

“Scoring from a set-piece isn’t something I had in mind when I brought the two of them in,” he added.

“We brought an attacker (Jota) in for a defender (Ibrahima Konate) to play even more attacking football than we did because we needed goals.

“But of course Jota scored the goal and Kostas with the set-piece. (Jota) had a big impact, he was the one apart from Mo (Salah) that had a few chances to score.”

Forest extended their unbeaten league run to seven matches and are still only six points behind Liverpool at the top of the table.

Nuno Espirito Santo displayed his pride at his players’ fighting performance.

He said: “We are competing very well. This is the mentality of the squad, it’s about playing, competing and improving.

“You know what I think about the table, for now it is not important, it is how we prepare for Southampton.

“We have to give credit to our players when we face such talented opponents and we raise the bar and challenge ourselves. It’s huge for us.

“I think it was a lesson for all of us. This is how we want to compete at the limit of our efforts and we saw that. Very very proud of the work of the players.”