Things are tough at the minute for Liverpool: for players, staff and supporters. Yet Arne Slot remains the right man to weather the storm…
THIS WASN’T Northampton Town in 2010.
It was the same competition and stadium. Same biblical rain and same image of a forlorn youngster ruing a dream turned nightmare.
On Wednesday, 15 years on from that League Cup defeat, the key difference lay in the home dugout.
That night, Liverpool had Roy Hodgson. A lacklustre figure who should never have graced the manager’s seat.
Hodgson was an awful fit, as we all know. And one of his more egregious traits was to stand there when it was going wrong and freeze into submission. His only cognitive functional ability was to plot his next scapegoat, because by Christ it wasn’t going to be himself.
By the time Nathan Eccleston missed the deciding penalty that night, many of us had seen enough to want Hodgson washed away with the monsoon that hit L4.
You might have similar feelings currently towards Arne Slot given Liverpool’s current predicament. It remains our right to look at something with the same interests at heart and want completely separate things when it comes to players and managers.
Perhaps you looked at the team and bench against Crystal Palace and was pushed over the edge. Perhaps seeing Oliver Glasner crowing like a smart-arsed, Zara rigged-out step dad at your expense for the third time in as many months became too much to take.
As the rain came down, Palace twisted the knife again. In Liverpool’s dugout, flanked by a hugely talented squad, was Slot. Battered by the elements in every sense.
You try to look into their soul at times like this. Do they have the minerals? Has the shirt become too heavy? Was he a Snake Oil salesman this whole time?
No.
I’m not adopting this mindset. Liverpool won’t adopt this mindset. Things are bad and I’m not sugarcoating that. They’re losing in the worst possible ways. They seem floored mentally, maybe physically. They’ve probably bolloxed up a title defence and that is heartbreaking to think about.
I’m with you. But I’m also with him. The thing I adore about Slot is how high he sets the standards. Hodgson wanted us to accept relegation as a prospect. Jürgen Klopp at times made Liverpool underdogs which drove Mohamed Salah mad, but it arguably worked.
Slot faced constant slander at the City Ground last season because for four months, he couldn’t shut up about Nottingham Forest’s win at Anfield. Even when Liverpool stood on the verge of glory he would harp back to it. This wasn’t a dig at Forest, just a glitch in the system he needed to correct.
His obsessions are now seen as excuses. It’s hard to dwell on the micro when the macro is on fire. People want answers.
Slot was also part of Liverpool’s summer revamp — but that transfer business doesn’t solely lie at his door. He was frustrated with how Liverpool performed from March onwards and wanted ‘weapons’ to make tight games wider in our favour.
How much of this current malaise is on Slot remains imbalanced. He can’t control missed sitters or lost headers. He can take Milos Kerkez out the side and I’d like that. He can set them up not to concede from one of the opposition’s first two shots, but they keep doing it anyway.
I’m going to say the thing that needs saying: their teammate died. Their family member. His life was snatched away on a sunny morning in July when everything was perfect, and now they look at his dressing room space every day and see the void. You don’t get to decide whether Diogo Jota’s death is a factor or not, it absolutely just is.
He must manage that. He must manage us and them and himself through this torturous process with a camera lens rammed in his face constantly.
We never got to see what a post-Klopp world looked like when things were hard because that period never came until now. The insecurities bring an inevitable yearning for a manager who would’ve done the exact same thing with the team on Wednesday if in the same situation.
Klopp is gone, off skiing and playing padel. He’s drinking Erdinger and getting weighed in for the privilege. He’s having to endure Steven Bartlett. Rather him than me.
Liverpool’s present and future remains Arne Slot. This is fucking tough. The absolute pits and I understand that with humiliation follows blame and sought after retribution. But park it.
They need us on Saturday. If you’re around Anfield, remember you’re in the lucky minority. You get to impact things. The players need to show up, but they need our help.
Imagine full-time if we win. That feeling of a victory in the league which has eluded us for so long. It will probably be the biggest let off since Tottenham. The taste of just one sweet, solitary victory while still wearing the badge of champions.
There’s a beautiful irony in there somewhere.
