Never Mind the Transfers, Here’s Arne Slot

Photo by Michael Regan/Getty Images

In a summer where many have bemoaned missed opportunities, Liverpool made sure to get one signing right.

Liverpool FC has always been a club with a special relationship with its managers (and now head coaches). By assuming the role, one automatically becomes the custodian of an institution, a father figure, an ambassador of sorts, and the de facto face of the club.

Succeeding Jürgen Klopp is not a job for anyone. (cc: stories of Thomas Tuchel bristling at mere mentions of Klopp at Mainz and Borussia Dortmund.) But in Arne Slot, they’ve found the perfect man. Every time Klopp has been brought up, Slot acknowledges the lofty heights his predecessor has reached but seems completely self-assured and confident in his ability to do the same.

In a summer of uncertainty where fan chatter has swung from a pendulum of transfer hopium, memes about mountains, to “unhinged why aren’t they doing anything rants”, perhaps Slot’s low-key assumption of the job has been the best way to handle this massive change. Three wins from three. Granted, it’s only Ipswich, Brentwood and lowly minnows Manchester United, but you can’t ask for a better start to life at Merseyside for our bald Dutch manager. There’s no doubt that Slot has inherited incredibly strong foundations from Klopp, but it is clear from watching Slot’s team in action that his ideas are getting through to the players, unlike the other Dutch manager on the sideline this past weekend.

Suppose Jürgen Klopp was a heavy metal football with a punk rock ethos of 100% effort every game. In that case, Slot has been like switching to an adjacent arena rock group, less tied down to those ethos and more willing to experiment with the tactical spectrum. Certainly, things feel familiar enough, but we’re playing along to different grooves. The players seem rejuvenated by the new messages. Perhaps Jürgen felt he had taken the group as far as he could, but I bet he’s grinning from ear to ear when he switches on the telly to watch the Reds. Maybe he knew an evolution was needed, but with so much history and baggage, he wasn’t the man to do this. Who knows. I look forward to that story being told in more detail when I’m old and grey. We’re all going to look back on Jürgen’s tenure with the team with lots of fond memories, but as we’ve all experienced with our own professional lives, there’s just something undeniably intoxicating and exciting about a change in environment.

Regardless of the easy schedule, it’s been wildly impressive how Slot has gone about fixing just about every flaw you could nitpick from last season’s team:

Conceding goals early? Not only are we not doing that, we’ve kept three clean sheets. Alisson has barely had to make a 1 v 1 save. Getting frustrated when we don’t score seems to be a thing of the past. We just reset and keep going. Luis Diaz is now a player with end product. Ryan Gravenberch now looks like a €80 million holding midfielder, a thing that’s made funnier because the sole reason he’s here at Liverpool is both Julian Nagelsmann and Thomas Tuchel thought he couldn’t play as part of a midfield duo at Bayern Munich.

We’re Always the Hard Way FC, for a reason.. It has and always will start with the head coach at Liverpool FC. We make our players better, and we do our talking on the training pitch. Sure, we could probably use a midfielder or two. Another defender would be excellent. But we’ve always preferred to depend on our coaches to solve problems rather than make panic moves, which I’ve always appreciated. Casemiro and his giant albatross of a contract on the opposite side of the pitch served as a great reminder of that.

I guess this is all to say: I’m very excited about our team, our manager, and I’m a Baldliever. Much like our manager, Liverpool have quietly snuck up on those who haven’t been paying attention. Underestimate them at your own risk. The face on the sidelines may be different, but the blueprint remains the same. Up the fucking Reds.