Reds lose to Plymouth, Villa beat Spurs in FA Cup

Liverpool suffered a stunning FA Cup exit on Sunday in a 1-0 defeat to Championship strugglers Plymouth, while Aston Villa inflicted another damaging 2-1 defeat on Tottenham boss Ange Postecoglou.

- Agencies

LONDON:

Arne Slot's decision to field a weakened team came back to haunt him, with Ryan Hardie's second-half penalty sealing Plymouth's epic upset and ending Liverpool's quest for a quadruple at Home Park.

Virgil van Dijk, Mohamed Salah, Andrew Robertson and Cody Gakpo were among the stars rested as Slot made 10 changes from the team that thrashed Tottenham 4-0 in the League Cup semi-final second leg on Thursday.

In a remarkably successful first season in charge of the Reds, it was a rare blunder by the former Feyenoord boss.

It was only the fourth time that a team top of the Premier League had been eliminated from the FA Cup by a lower division club.

"We were not having a very good day. A result like this is the outcome," Slot said.

Masterminding a famous victory over Liverpool while fighting to haul Plymouth off the bottom of the Championship was no hardship for Argyle manager Miron Muslic, who was a refugee from war-torn Bosnia as a child.