Arne Slot could be the perfect person at the perfect time
Here’s some good advice: you don’t want to be the one who has to follow in a successful person’s footsteps. We’re not talking just about football here – this perceived wisdom could apply to all facets of life – but football is certainly caught up in the web of this little nugget. For case studies, see David Moyes and Unai Emery, as they floundered in the shadows of the empires that had been built before them by Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger. And so Arne Slot, receiving the baton passed to him by Liverpool’s modern-day Shankly, Jurgen Klopp, already has to wade through a distinct waft of suspicion and doubt. Cheeks are being puffed and eyeballs rolled before the season has begun, which is quite wrong.
I knew very little about Slot before his appointment. And so it is interesting to watch him now. It is nine years since anyone but Klopp took a pre-season at Liv- erpool and Joe Gomez is the only player remaining from that final Brendan Rodger’s summer of 2015. No other players currently at the club have known anything different. And there’s no doubt that Klopp and everything he is and has done has infused the club over the past few years. But the crux of the issue is what sort of state the club is in overall. Both Manchester United and Arsenal were on downward trajectories – the structure of both clubs confused and fraying. Slotting a new manager into those was never going to work. The fruits of that are still being borne out at Old Trafford, where the club and team remain disjointed, whilst you can see the improved structure and personnel at Arsenal have allowed Mikel Arteta to start to flourish.
Arne Slot is not Klopp. And, more importantly, he is not Klopp-lite. Initial impressions are that he lacks the natural warmth of Klopp – the wide smile, clasped hands, booming laugh and bear hugs that almost became his trademark. However, there appears to be a touch of Rafa about him – thoughtfulness, tactical astuteness and a calm assuredness that his ways will work. He seems pleased with the level of the players he has to work with, which seems to be reciprocated with the early thoughts coming out from the team as well.
The infusion of Klopp has left his finger marks all over the club, which leaves it in a far better place than when he joined. His legacy will not just be about the manager he was and the success he brought, but how the club is now, including the culture, the training facilities and the youth set-up. He deserved the all-powerful status that he enjoyed. Slot will not wield that size of the sword. The structure now in place – from Billy Hogan to Michael Edwards, Richard Hughes and Julian Ward – has replaced the omnipotence of Klopp; the club is not trying to replicate what they have just had, they are trying to move on, develop and progress. Slot’s official title of Head Coach, not ‘Manager’, is reflective of that. His role within the structure is different, but defined.
It will be interesting to see how certain players perform under Slot. The attacking midfielder has always been a bit of an enigma to Klopp. His best Liverpool teams were built on the false nine of Bobby Firmino, cutting in goal-scoring wingers and three hard-working central midfielders. It wasn’t just the brilliance of Trent and Robertson that gave them more assists from full-back than the Liverpool mid-field. The likes of Harvey Elliott, Dominik Szoboszlai and Fabio Carvalho may flour- ish more under Slot.
It is disingenuous to paint Klopp as a top man-manager and Slot as a tactician and compare both of them as such. It forces a bigger comparison than there actually is. But there are clear differences, which have to be viewed positively. We all loved Klopp, and we always will, but to hanker after what we once had with him will not help Slot or the team.
It may be that this is a season of transition of some sort. Slot should not be judged on the first game, the first month, or even the first season. Because of Klopp’s departure, Liverpool are flying a bit under the radar at present, which I think suits everyone just fine. I have a feeling that things will be a lot better than many people are thinking.
There are, of course, jobs to be sorted – not least the contract situations of Van Dijk, Salah and, most pertinently, Trent. A holding midfielder, centre back and possibly a winger are needed. But the right men do appear to be in place at the club to make these things work. We’ve seen a version of this Liverpool before – and it doesn’t panic, especially when it comes to transfers.
Only time will tell, and be able to judge, Arne Slot’s time at Liverpool. In the meantime, we will fret, support, be angry, joyful and furiously debate. I fervently hope that Slot’s name is not quietly shoved in with that of Moyes and Emery when it comes to failed managers attempting to follow a legacy. I prefer to think positively, with the idea of Klopp as the modern-day Shankly – a charismatic figure who was idolised, who re-built the club, earned success along the way and left on his terms, before passing the mantle onto a quieter successor. And we all know what happened with Bob Paisley, don’t we?
