Arne Slot opens up on conversations with Jurgen Klopp as he seeks to emulate the German by leading Liverpool to the Premier League title

Arne Slot has said that Jurgen Klopp is often on the phone with compliments after games – but the pair have not spoken about how to negotiate a nail-biting title race.

Former boss Klopp won one league title during his spell at Liverpool but that could have been more if they had not narrowly missed out to Manchester City on a couple of occasions.

With City out of the title picture for this season at least, Slot’s men go into the weekend eight points clear of chasers Arsenal – having played a game more – and the Dutch boss has said there are things to learn from old Premier League seasons.

‘There’s always something to learn from history or from recent years,’ he said. ‘But it’s a different competitor this time, it’s a different team we have. So this team, only a few of them were involved in the title race with City.

‘I think for the most part it’s a team that hasn’t experienced that yet. So there might be one or two things to learn, but in general I think it’s a new season with new players, you can’t compare.

‘I don’t know which team they then faced at the end of the season, it’s difficult to take something from it, but players that have experienced it might have learned something from it. We do talk about that once in a while, but not so much.’

Trent Alexander-Arnold celebrated his equaliser against Aston Villa in Wednesday’s 2-2 draw

Jurgen Klopp has offered his successor plenty of compliments during their phone calls

On speaking to Klopp, Slot added: ‘No, we haven’t spoken about (managing a title race). He’s only mostly given a lot of compliments after a game. I can talk to Jurgen, I’ve experienced it.

‘Only one time when Liverpool won it, it was 25 points, but that’s not normal in a football season, except for France, because in France it’s always like this with Paris Saint-Germain. But in almost every other league, it’s tight until the end.’

Slot and Liverpool were criticised last summer for only making one signing – the lesser-spotted Federico Chiesa. And the boss was asked whether he can foresee a summer shake-up after this season.

He refused to be drawn in on a debate about the forward line but said: ‘We are looking at every single position and we are looking at the team. We said this many times last summer, we didn’t do a lot because we – Richard (Hughes, sporting director), me and all the other people involved – just wanted to know how these players were working with me, the different manager.

‘Now we have a very good idea about that, and I think it’s clear to you that I’m not going to tell you which positions we prefer, but it is clear that we’ve assessed the squad, we’ve assessed what we think where we can improve, and that’s where we try to go for in the summer.

‘But it’s quite an important two or three months to go. And we have some contract situations to take care of, so there’s a lot of work to do in the background, but my main focus is on the current squad.’