Never in Arne Slot’s wildest dreams would he have imagined this scenario.
Sitting eight points clear at the top of the Premier League table, his Liverpool team are licking their lips at the prospect of facing a Manchester City side in disarray next…Tap Here to Read the Full Story ▶▶
If the Reds win, they will be 11 points clear, a margin permitting at least three defeats in the campaign’s second half.
Slot must know that Anfield has rarely been a venue where Pep Guardiola’s team thrived, even during periods when they were firing on all cylinders.
And this season’s iteration has been a pale imitation of the previous sides the Etihad Stadium has witnessed.
There have been barely any occasions in his tenure when Manchester City’s manager has sought to lower expectations. But, when asked about the prospect of losing to the Reds, the Catalan conceded the gap would be too wide to recover.
“Yes [an 11-point margin would be too big to overturn] in terms of Liverpool winning, winning, winning,” Guardiola said after his team slumped to a 0-4 defeat to Tottenham Hotspur.
“We have to think about the next game rather than the end of the season. We won it in the past because we deserved it, now we have to step-by-step get better and first of [all] qualification for the Champions League.”
Slot, as might be expected for a man handling a tricky handover in his first season, has been attempting to control expectations. The bare facts of the matter are that only twice in Premier League history has a side that won 10 of their first 12 games failed to win the title, but any manager worth their salt knows it is tempting fate to linger on such omens.
“We know what we have to put into it to get this league and these wins,” Slot told the media after beating Southampton 2-3 a day after City’s collapse.
“There were one or two games that were won by a big margin but the rest were all by small margins. We know how difficult it is to win a game, and these players have been in the Premier League longer than I have been.
“I think last year [2022-23], even later on in the season, Arsenal led by eight points and City came back.
“You know if you face Arsenal, City, Chelsea, Tottenham were great [in defeating City 4-0] as well, they are all able to win so many games in a row. It is nice to have this position, but we are definitely not getting carried away.”
Slot was correct in highlighting the margin of Liverpool’s wins being far narrower than the streak suggests. The come-from-behind victory against Southampton was a prime demonstration of how victory is never a foregone conclusion even against so-called relegation candidates.
“We dominated the whole game, which is not that easy. Maybe you think: ‘Ah, we play the No 20, this is what we expect.’ But I’ve seen many games of Southampton, where they dominated. If you are 2-1 down after an hour, then maybe you are over the moon if you win 3-2,” Slot added.
But Liverpool’s ability to see out those close games gives the Reds fans confidence. Most promisingly, Slot’s team’s control differentiates his regime from the high-risk, high-reward tactics of his predecessor, Jurgen Klopp.
As the former boss watched on from his position as Red Bull’s head of global soccer, the German coach could be forgiven for shedding tears of frustration and regret.
Why Now?
It must be a sore point for Klopp that the seemingly unbreakable Manchester City machine would choose to malfunction immediately after he decided to quit the Premier League.
He was pipped on two occasions by a solitary point to the title by Liverpool’s North West rivals in what was the highest-quality rivalry in the competition’s history.
On both occasions, they were separated by a hair’s breadth the clubs each finished with 90+ point tallies, a feat they managed individually, too, in campaigns that delivered the title.
The tight nature of those single-point title battles made a draw feel like a hammer blow to a club’s title credentials.
It makes it even more absurd that City would go out and lose in three successive Premier League matches so comprehensively this season.
And for that, we should allow Klopp his tears and anguish. Predicting the Mancunian’s recent demise requires a level of insight that even an expert coach like Jurgen Klopp would struggle to possess.
However, there is another factor he might regret more: the tactics.
Slot has mostly stayed the same at Liverpool this season; only one fringe player has arrived to bolster the ranks.
However, the need to continuously press and harry opponents into errors has been replaced with a Guardiola-esque emphasis on ball retention.
As a result, Liverpool no longer has to sweat so much for its victories or contrive to throw them away. This has made a difference in tight encounters or even games, like Arsenal away, when the team struggles for control.
We can only wonder what Klopp thinks as he watches from his role, perhaps fittingly given his soccer philosophy, within the world’s most pre-eminent energy drink manufacturer-come-sports-empire.
During his leadership, Klopp’s team could have had a couple of ice-cold Red Bulls at half-time to replenish their energy levels for more gegenpressing.
Under Slot’s control-based philosophy, the only people who would get the postgame caffeine jitters would be Klopp and his team at RB HQ, who, you would imagine, have access to a fridge filled with shiny silver and blue cans...Tap Here to Read the Full Story ▶▶
