As the 2024-25 Premier League season started, many understandably expected a drop-off from Liverpool following the departure of Jürgen Klopp. The German departed Anfield in the off-season after having coached the Reds over a legendary nine-year stint in which he helmed Liverpool to a Champions League title in 2019 as well as a Premier League title in 2020 while, for the majority of his tenure, ensuring that the Reds were Manchester City’s closest challengers on the domestic front. Under Klopp, Liverpool had experienced their most successful era in more than three decades.
As such, when Arne Slot took over, to say that the former Feyenoord head coach had a tough act to follow would have been a colossal understatement. However, though it’s still early in the season, Slot has so far appeared to have picked up from right where Klopp left off - and evidence of this could be seen in their dominant 3-0 victory over arch-rivals Manchester United.
Liverpool and United had been through sharply contrasting off-seasons. Liverpool struggled to land any players at all while United, now under new ownership, spent heavily to bring in a slew of newcomers to Old Trafford. However, the way Liverpool showed up to United’s own turf and absolutely decimated them, it certainly didn’t look that way at all.
Luis Díaz scored a late first-half brace with both goals coming within a seven-minute span. After the break, Mohamed Salah made it 3-0 in the 56th minute, notching his 12th career league goal against the Red Devils and thus extending his all-time record for league goals scored against Manchester United.
There have been countless cases in which a new coach who takes over from a legend ends up unable to live up to the predecessor’s reputation, collapses under the pressure, presides over a period of struggle, and is ultimately fired in short order. So far, though, Slot seems to have avoided this - he’s taken to Liverpool seamlessly and instead, even seems to be benefiting from the “new coach boost” which in the cases of those who replace a club legend who’s just left, often doesn’t apply.
Slot came to Merseyside after a highly impressive three-year tenure at Feyenoord. Prior to arriving at Liverpool, he had coached the Rotterdam club to the Eredivisie title in the 2022-23 season and won the Rinus Michels award as the league’s best coach in two of his three seasons. That said, some apprehension was understandable on the part of Liverpool fans as Slot had never coached in a major European league before - and now he’d be thrown into the fire as he would be replacing Klopp.
Instead, Slot has been thriving so far. Perhaps the main driver of Slot’s early success in the Anfield dugout lies in the fact that the Dutchman hasn’t strayed too far from Klopp’s tactical blueprint. In this way, perhaps Liverpool’s relative failure, the signing of Federico Chiesa notwithstanding, has turned out to be something of a blessing in disguise because it has allowed Slot to generally stick to what has been working, not change too much, and thus not overcomplicate matters from a strategic standpoint.
Something which Liverpool will likely benefit from during Slot’s time in the position will be his development of young players. Slot’s first coaching post was as a youth coach at PEC Zwolle; he has continued to carry the mentality of one until today. At Feyenoord, Slot was known for placing great emphasis on the club’s youth academy with several of its alumni getting plenty of game time under his watch. With this in mind, the timing of his entry at Liverpool couldn’t have been better due to the fact that Liverpool’s youth academy have produced several very promising youngsters in recent years; don’t be surprised if many of them get a notable bump in minutes played under Slot.
Although it was never going to be easy to replace Jürgen Klopp, Arne Slot appeared to be someone who checked all the boxes - and so far, Liverpool’s on-field product has backed that up. While there’s no doubt that things will get tougher in certain ways as the season progresses, there are nonetheless lots of green flags up - at least for now. If any team can possibly end City’s stranglehold on the Premier League title, it’ll likely be Liverpool.
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