🔥🏟️Why Arne Slot is the reason fans shouldn’t worry about quiet transfer window

IPSWICH, ENGLAND – Saturday, August 17, 2024: Liverpool’s head coach Arne Slot during the FA Premier League match between Ipswich Town FC and Liverpool FC at Portman Road. (Photo by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)

Some coaches are so attached to a style of play that there is no changing them. It’s their way or the highway. This is generally seen as a positive, but if the coach doesn’t have the right players or a squad that understands what they want, the engine falters and splutters.

There is no doubt Slot has a discernible style – the 92 percent pass completion against Brentford was their highest ever in the Premier League and comes from the belief in occasionally recycling the ball to dictate the tempo.

The half-time change against Ipswich showed his desire for physically dominant centre-backs to win the ball higher up the pitch. In the comprehensive win against Man United, the centre-backs were confidently firing passes between the lines into the midfield in a way that suggested it was something that had clearly already been worked on.

Yet, Slot is intelligent and humble enough to know different opponents and match situations require changes in approach, and often it is better to balance imposing his ideas and maximising the player attributes that he has already got.

Matchday LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND – Sunday, August 25, 2024: Liverpool’s captain Virgil van Dijk, goalkeeper Alisson Becker, Ibrahima Konaté, Andy Robertson and Alexis Mac Allister line-up before the FA Premier League match between Liverpool FC and Brentford FC at Anfield. Liverpool won 2-0. (Photo by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)

For example, at Feyenoord, you would see the same domination of possession in midfield, the tenacious pressing, the full-backs pushing high and the likes of David Hancko aggressively winning the ball from centre-back high up the pitch or playing balls into midfield.

Yet the interchangeable freedom given to his Liverpool front three to wreak havoc as they see fit? That is very un-Slot from his Feyenoord teams, where each player had a certain job.

Walking into a role and having the attacking players he has is fortunate, but Slot has still been able to acknowledge that they already know and work well together and that trying to impose new ideas would potentially blunt an already potent attacking weapon.

You could make the same argument about his willingness to let Alexander-Arnold play his traditional long diagonals. That would not have happened in Rotterdam.