Two or three months into his time as Liverpool manager a friend visiting from the Netherlands remarked to Arne Slot that there were no obvious references to him in the club shop at Anfield.
It was still possible, however, to buy books about his predecessor Jurgen Klopp.
‘I haven’t won anything yet,’ Slot replied. ‘Why would they celebrate me?’
Now that the last lap of Slot’s debut season in England is here, opportunity is his and he will be judged by many on what happens now. A Premier League title stands before the Liverpool manager like an open goal. If he falls on his face over the final nine games that will become his story.
But the truth is that Slot has already won. He has already succeeded. The big questions at the start of the season were not about winning the Premier League – not a single person predicted that – but whether he could fill the enormous Anfield void left by Klopp rather than falling headlong into it.
So, yes, Slot has proved that already. Slot’s Liverpool are 12 points clear of Arsenal, having lost just once in the league. Recent disappointments in the Champions League and Carabao Cup have been deeply felt and Slot’s team have looked flat.
Arne Slot has already won. He has already succeeded. The big questions at the start of the season were not about winning the Premier League – not a single person predicted that
Recent defeats should not detract from Slot taking over so seamlessly from Jurgen Klopp
Slot faced the biggest challenge facing an incoming manager in England since David Moyes replaced Sir Alex Ferguson in 2013
But that should not detract from the fact Slot’s succession after eight and a half years of Klopp represented the biggest challenge facing an incoming manager in England since David Moyes replaced Sir Alex Ferguson in 2013. The 46-year-old Dutchman has handled it with all the equanimity of a bloke walking his dog across Stanley Park.
Last August nobody gave him a chance. Gary Lineker said it would be ‘impossible’ for Slot to win the league.
Gary Neville suggested Liverpool may ‘tank’ and predicted a fifth-placed finish with which Roy Keane agreed.
Jamie Carragher went for third while Alan Shearer admitted a title would be a ‘big ask’. Me? I tipped Liverpool for third and thought it generous.
Slot is ahead of the game, then. He is ahead of all of us and those who know him are not remotely surprised.
‘Arne is a coach first and foremost and the one thing he was never going to do was turn this into a personality battle with Jurgen Klopp,’ someone who knows him well tells me.
‘There were no gains to be had there. So he arrived at Liverpool and left all the pictures on the wall and all the memories exactly where they should be. But he looked at the team and knew he could improve it. That’s what he does. That’s his obsession.’
Comparisons with Moyes – and indeed Unai Emery’s replacement of Arsene Wenger at Arsenal in 2018 – are only partly valid. When Ferguson and Wenger stepped away from their clubs, they took most of the magic with them.
Moyes and Unai Emery both struggled to replace iconic managers at big English clubs
Data-driven, the Liverpool manger’s analysis, criticism and education of footballers is always placed on a platform of irrefutable statistical evidence
Even Mohamed Salah has improved during Slot’s brief tenure at Liverpool
‘Emery drowned in the vacuum caused by no discernible structure,’ reveals a source, while senior United officials recognise the hurdles they should have been smart enough to move from their new manager’s path. ‘We failed David,’ former executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward is known to have said.
Equally, Moyes couldn’t get good players to play for him at Old Trafford. He made small changes that, to a degree, felt for change’s sake and a bunch of title winners moaned about them. They pushed back just because he wasn’t their man.
Slot has found a way round that and that’s probably his greatest early achievement. He was recruited from Feyenoord for, among other things, his record of improving players. Data-driven, the Liverpool manger’s analysis, criticism and education of footballers is always placed on a platform of irrefutable statistical evidence.
‘He can be brutally honest with players,’ an Anfield source tells me. ‘He isn’t a shouter. He has only really unloaded once and that was at half-time of the recent Southampton game. He really gave it to them that day.
‘But normally he will sit a player down and talk about what he wants and then he will show them why he wants it. Stats, data, clips. Impossible to counter. That’s how he gets their buy-in.’
Changes in players such as Ibrahima Konate – perhaps the most improved footballer at a ‘Big Six’ club – Dominik Szoboszlai and even Mohamed Salah have been irrefutable this season. Inside Anfield – even though it doesn’t play to popular belief – it is thought that Trent Alexander-Arnold’s defending has also improved under Slot.
And this collective growth – Liverpool are on pace to finish with 92 points this season – has all been delivered without the one player Slot thought he needed last summer, a holding player.
Liverpool thought that the Spaniard Martin Zubimendi was coming right until the moment the Real Sociedad player didn’t. Manchester City may have lost their fulcrum Rodri early in the season and have suffered as their title defence fell apart. Well, Slot and Liverpool never even got to meet theirs.
Liverpool are on pace to finish with 92 points this season – all without the one player Slot thought he needed last summer, Martin Zubimendi
Even the instructors on the Dutch FA coaching course back in the day always suspected the young Slot knew more than they did
Slot knows about the narrative of what may happen if he loses Trent Alexander-Arnold, Salah and Virgil van Dijk this summer
Slot is aware of what has been said about his team recently. He knows about the narrative of what people think may happen if he loses Alexander-Arnold, Salah and Virgil van Dijk this summer. He reads things written at home and abroad.
When, for example, the former Dutch international Wim Kieft wrote a column in the Netherlands the day before the Carabao Cup defeat suggesting Slot may not be a ‘magician’ after all, the Liverpool manager saw it and raised an eyebrow.
For that is not him and never was. Even though the instructors on the Dutch FA (KNVB) coaching course back in the day always suspected the young Slot knew more than they did, it’s never been about magic or stardust for him. Quite the opposite.
‘If Jurgen was a messiah figure then Arne is the technocrat,’ adds another well-placed source. ‘For him it’s not about the cult of personality. He had no interest in replacing Jurgen’s personality because nobody could. But he knew he could replace him as a coach and build on and improve on what he had left him.’
Back in late May last year when Liverpool confirmed Slot’s appointment, the world clamoured for words from the new man and were given precisely nothing. Instead, Slot went on holiday with his family. It was a deliberate tactic agreed by the manager and his new club and was driven in part by a desire to heighten the impact when he did eventually sit down to talk.
When the day came, in mid-June, he was graceful about Klopp. Indeed in his opening interview with LFCTV, he referenced his predecessor more than 20 times and it was hard not to worry about him back then.
How could this relatively unheralded coach from the Netherlands possibly hope to replace one of the Premier League’s most iconic managers?
And maybe that’s the beauty of it. Maybe the trick of it was that Slot has never tried to and in doing so has pulled it off seamlessly. Whatever happens between now and the season’s end, the scale of that achievement doesn’t change.
How could this relatively unheralded coach from the Netherlands possibly have hoped to replace one of the Premier League’s most iconic managers?
Maybe the trick of it was that Slot has never tried to replace Klopp and in doing so has pulled it off seamlessly
Don’t talk yourself out of it, Sean
Sean Dyche’s greatest advocate is his actual career in management.
By any sensible metric, he has been successful.
Over the course of 14 years at Watford, Burnley and Everton, Dyche’s results have spoken for him.
By railing so publicly this week against a perception that has always been unfair, he only lends credibility to what really shouldn’t be a debate.
