Cody Gakpo has pinpointed the moment that he knew Liverpool were in very good hands under Arne Slot.
Last summer, the 46-year-old took on the unenviable task of trying to build upon Jurgen Klopp’s exceptional legacy at Anfield, with some pundits tipping him to struggle in the footsteps of an illustrious successor similar to the woes of David Moyes and Unai Emery at Manchester United and Arsenal respectively.
Fast forward to the final week of January, and the Reds find themselves top of the Premier League, many bookies’ favourites to win the Champions League, targeting a prolonged FA Cup run and potentially just two wins away from retaining the Carabao Cup.
Indeed, a few managers who’ve recently come up against LFC have labelled them the best club team in the world at the moment!
Gakpo: Old Trafford win convinced us that Slot was onto something good
Almost eight months on from Slot beginning his tenure as Liverpool head coach, Gakpo pointed to one match early in the season when he knew that the Reds were onto a good thing under his fellow Dutchman.
In a feature for The Players’ Tribune, the 25-year-old wrote: “I don’t think the outside world really expected much from us in the beginning of this season, if I’m being honest. Because last season’s story was, we were great until the last 10 games, and then we messed it up. We knew we were close. We just needed a little bit more, but couldn’t get it.
“When we started pre-season, obviously a lot of guys weren’t here because we had the Euros and the Copa America. When we played a friendly with the guys we had, you could see that we were still figuring it out. We weren’t used to this style yet. Then slowly but surely we really felt confident in how Slot wanted us to play.
“The first games we were flying. We beat Ipswich and Brentford. But when we went to Old Trafford and won 3–0, that was really the confirmation. Like, OK, We’re here. This can really be something.“
(Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)Statement win for Slot so early in his Liverpool tenure
Last summer, only the most optimistic of Liverpool fans could’ve expected their team to be in such a healthy position across four competitions at this stage of the season, and that’s a testament to just how brilliantly Slot has managed a potentially career-ruining transition from Klopp’s reign.
As Gakpo hinted, the Reds would’ve fully expected to win their first two league games before the trip to Old Trafford in September, a venue where we suffered an agonising extra time defeat in the FA Cup and saw our title hopes begin to unravel towards the end of the 2023/24 campaign.
Instead, we unleashed the agony of those results on Man United by winning 3-0, a scoreline which could’ve been even more emphatic but for LFC playing most of the second half in cruise control, such was the level of dominance they exerted over the home side.
It was a statement win not just in terms of setting the tone for what was to come for both teams this season, but also for Slot to show from an early stage that Liverpool had made the right decision in appointing him as Klopp’s successor.
The 46-year-old has yet to lift a trophy as Reds boss, but the results from his first eight months in charge suggest that he’ll taste that experience quite a few times throughout his reign at Anfield!
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