Physical Address

304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124

Liverpool’s foreign coaches all won a trophy – Arne Slot must learn on the job to follow them

Legacy left behind by Slot’s predecessors means the Dutchman must react quickly to setbacks

Arne Slot must feel like he is involved in a prolonged inauguration ceremony, every week bringing another rite of passage; after his first Liverpool game, his first Anfield fixture and his first Old Trafford trip, comes his first European adventure in his new post.
With that, Slot must inspire a reaction to his first Liverpool defeat following Saturday’s poor display against Nottingham Forest.
The Dutchman’s selection against AC Milan in San Siro has assumed greater significance in offering an insight into whether he is steadfast in his belief in a preferred starting XI which started the season so well, or must change tack sooner than he anticipated.
Slot was the anti-tinkerman at Feyenoord, only one Eredivisie side using fewer players last season.
With more depth at Anfield come greater selection dilemmas and a challenge to the ideals which earned him the Kop job. Dealing with a squad of 20 international players who believe themselves first team-ready, some of whom will be prone to sulking when not selected, requires skilful diplomacy. So too does dealing with the inevitable aftermath of a poor performance when those starting on the bench look more attractive.
Eventually, Slot must show faith in those who have been understudies. If Darwin Nunez is not going to be unleashed after his enforced international absence and having seen the strikeforce struggle on Saturday, then when? Curtis Jones, fit again after his untimely injury, is also itching for a start having been namechecked so positively in pre-season.
The clues to Slot wrestling with how to use more options than he is accustomed to preceded the Forest game and he has indicated changes are afoot in the coming weeks, but he is adamant failure to rotate was not his side’s undoing and hinted he may pick the same XI in San Siro.
“If rotation is the reason you lose a game it would not be the first game I lost in 2024,” said Slot, who added Federico Chiesa may make his Liverpool debut from the bench.
“For me it is too simple to put the loss on rotation. Too many did not reach their normal level. For me it had a lot to do with the playing style of the opponent.”
His response to Liverpool’s loss will be instructive as he goes about finding an immediate fix. A new coach usually learns more from defeats than wins.  
“My former teams were able to actually play almost every game with the same players but it is a different league so I might have to adjust to that,” he said last week.
“I get some feedback from medical staff and performance staff about where they are and what the best thing is to do, and then we make the decision before every game.”
Slot has assumed control of Liverpool in different circumstances to his most recent predecessors, but he still needs time to get to grips with the idiosyncrasies of a different culture where one loss is a setback, two a worry and three a full-blown crisis.
Each of Liverpool’s three previous overseas managerial appointments – Gerard Houllier, Rafa Benitez and Jurgen Klopp – won European trophies, and AC Milan are the ultimate reminder of the club’s gilded history as the Champions League draw inevitably summoned memories of the 2005 ‘Miracle of Istanbul’.
But each of them all underwent a crash course on Liverpool’s and English football’s peculiar demands before being successful.
Given the observations about Slot’s lack of changes against Forest, there is some irony that Houllier spent the early years of his reign having to preach about the necessity to rotate. Houllier once felt compelled to issue a staunch defence of his methods after ‘resting’ striker Robbie Fowler the week after he scored a hat-trick.
“You may miss out this weekend and be the hero next time,” he said. “I don’t have 11 players. I have a squad of players.”
For Benitez, the entire first season was spent building a knowledge base of how to deal with the more physical Premier League having previously mastered the more technical La Liga, where he had been a double title winner with Valencia. His first defeat as Liverpool manager, his side bullied by Sam Allardyce’s Bolton Wanderers, stuck with him for the rest of his career in England and explained why Peter Crouch and Momo Sissoko were among his early signings. While conquering Europe, he lost 14 Premier League games in his first season, before leading the club to its biggest year-upon-year improvement 12 months later.
Klopp arrived in England and immediately railed against the fixture schedule, the physical demands of his style meaning regular line-up changes were compulsory, even if the spine of his line-up solidified. He was a rapid learner, but the tutorial was still necessary despite his brilliance.
The world has changed since Bob Paisley announced his starting XI as ‘same as last season’. The circumstances in which Slot arrived – walking in the immediate shadow of an Anfield god – have been compared to Liverpool’s most unassuming and successful manager.
An older generation of Liverpool fans will recall that even Paisley needed a season to prove himself a worthy successor to Bill Shankly. He was trophyless in his first season, suffering 11 league losses as he was pipped to the title by Derby County, and suffered a European exit in October.
The broader brush strokes of Liverpool’s history mean there is no let up in the reminders that Slot must stand on the shoulders of giants, particularly when leading the club into Uefa competitions.
None of the greats avoided early bumps in the road and Slot’s first will not be his last. How impressively he responds will demonstrate his capacity to follow previous trends.
Recommended

en_USEnglish