Red Reign: Arne Slot Leads Liverpool to Historic 20th Premier League Title
Liverpool are English champions again, and the Klopp-to-Slot era transition has been smoother than what the faithful would have imagined.
As Liverpool’s season unfolded, summiting in their 20th league triumph at a canter with a 5-1 win against Tottenham on Sunday, the songs celebrating former Jurgen Klopp grew feebler. His face faded a little from the flags fluttering in the stands. Not that the faithful cruelly forgot the man who reacquainted the institution with success after decades of pain, turned them from a nostalgia brand to a genuine force. But they were fully embracing his successor Arne Slot, knee sunk in the raptures of an unforeseen march to the title, and dancing to the tunes of a bashful Dutchman who rarely moves on the touchline.
On the day of their coronation, Liverpool barely flinched as Spurs landed the first punch. Instead of panicking, the Reds just turned on the afterburners to thrash their woeful North London opponents with an alarming efficiency.
It was not meant to be the year of Liverpool or Slot. Premier League success tends to conform to a pattern. A new manager comes, feels, instills his ideals, builds and rebuilds, stumbles and staggers, before – if the owners are generous – they scale the promised land. The holy quartet of managers in the Premier League—Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger, Pep Guardiola and Klopp—barely caught a glimpse of the trophy in their first season. Only four have ever enjoyed beginner’s luck. Slot is the fifth, and arguably the least celebrated of the group that features luminaries such as Jose Mourinho, Carlo Ancelotti, Manuel Pellegrini, Claudio Ranieri, and Antonio Conte.
Thus, Slot and his merry men have effortlessly debunked the prevailing myths in the Premier League. Rather, in many ways, Liverpool’s triumph was a contradiction of the accepted wisdom in winning the league.
He demonstrated that a new coach doesn’t needlessly rebuild for the sake of it. Klopp had to because the team he inherited was a shocking mess. The Liverpool that Klopp bequeathed to Slot was ageing but an assemblage of highly-skilled talents. The squad had its flaws—among them a non-scoring centre forward, absence of a genuine holding midfielder, an accomplice for centre back Virgil van Dijk, and a bunch of injury-prone midfielders. But not an awful lot that required a makeover.
How he stiffened out the perceivable cracks reveals his undemonstrative genius. To fill the holding midfield void, he retooled a No 8 into a No 6, harnessing the best of two worlds. Ryan Gravenberch has been one of his unsung heroes. He combined his supreme passing range, robust physicality, dazzling half-turns and technical prowess to perform the role of midfield duct, functioning as both the defensive screen and the back-line-midfield-forward-like link. He was the centre of Liverpool’s universe, others revolving around him like obliging planets, with frictionless control. Halfway through the season, he became such an integral block of Slot’s scheme that senior midfielders Alexis Mac Allister, Dominik Szoboszlai and Curtis Jones donned second-act roles.
The non-scoring centre forward riddle solved itself, as Mohammed Salah spring neutered the autumnal aridness of Darwin Nunez’s returns. The Egyptian, the fittest he ever had been after his worst season that was 2023-24, benefitted from a relatively freer role on the right, as well as the right-back making overlapping runs more frequently than in the Klopp era of playmaking full-backs. Salah moved higher up the pitch, he ran short explosive bursts, and the balls were sped rapidly to him, so that he could work his genius on the ball. He benefitted from Trent-Alexander Arnold operating in a more orthodox full-back position. He did endure wild fluctuations in form, but in clutch moments, he fired the silver bullets. Cody Gakpo and Luis Diaz, too, delivered timely goals to ensure that Salah’s off days did not turn costly.
A man of mild manners, in utter contrast to the teeth-gnashing, turf-kicking Klopp, Slot also emphasised that tactical flexibility is trustworthier than an unshakeable commitment to the dogma. At the end of the day, for a team like Liverpool, success is measured in gold and silver. He realised it from the start. The legs slowing down, the team bereft of tireless runners of the early Klopp era. So Slot’s men shed the relentless Gegenpress. The press was more classic rock than heavy metal, guaranteeing that the team sustained its intensity for much of the season. They did not excite the audience like the Klopp iterations, wins were more functional than flashy, but they are a side that had the belief that they could grind out wins and draws from defeats, a trait Manchester United exuded in the Ferguson era.
Like Salah, Liverpool benefitted from the equally sustained excellence of van Dijk. He too seemed drifting to the sunset, he rediscovered his pace, zeal and leadership to rediscover his aura. He compensated for flaky and fickle partners to keep goals at a trickle—only Arsenal have conceded fewer goals than Liverpool.
The Reds also showed that with resourceful management of the squad, a horrible transfer market could be masked. Liverpool made just a signing—Federico Chiesa, who did not start a single game—not out of a cost-cutting measure but they could not land the targets they had coveted. It was a lesson for teams that panic buy, those that shell out astronomical sums for last-minute purchases of those that were not on their wishlist. They would likely shop big next season, but even if they don’t, they would have the belief that the manager could make the team work.
The most striking feature of Slot, though, is how he undersells himself. He doesn’t make loud statements, he does not criticise his players or those of the opponent in public, or bask in the afterglow of success. Like when he was asked about moving an inch closer from becoming a Liverpool legend the week before, he replied: “Yes, but I prefer to get my mind on that inch and not on what happens afterwards because there is still an inch to be done.” On Sunday, the inch blurred and Slot became a Liverpool legend. The Klopp-to-Slot era transition has been smoother than what the faithful would have imagined.
