Premier League football has changed this season. Slot’s Liverpool must accept this and adapt when necessary to keep moving forward…
FOOTBALL in England continues to wade through its newly adopted awkward years.
Newly promoted sides are no longer absolutely miserable. Top teams can look dishevelled and confidence drained. Teams who cannot beat Burnley, Wolverhampton Wanderers or West Ham rock up against Europe’s elite and deal with them like a swift aperitif.
The emotional pull of believing Liverpool have embarked on an unbeaten run actually worth celebrating is once again upon us.
A trip to Bournemouth represents a more favourable proposition than a bottom three team at Anfield.
It’s a strange old time to be a Red.
Watching this league season unfold, absolutely everything feels off.
Nobody barring Arsenal has a whiff of supremacy or consistency. Yet even they only ever look one bad result away from a YouTube congregation of mouth-frothing and finger-pointing outside The Emirates. Everyone looks fallible.
The numbers being posted tell you nobody is scoring like they were. We all went goal-mad in COVID. Something had to keep us entertained. Now the shutters have been pulled down.
Comparisons are being drawn to early millennium Serie A football, when a league became so low-event that the entire product lost its allure and sense of superstardom.
Liverpool clearly haven’t expected the attritional shift which has taken place.
The club bought with the idea of making tight scorelines wider. They envisaged games being out of sight at half-time and everyone having a lovely afternoon.
We all thought we’d get more Federico Chiesa out of choice, not necessity.
Now it feels like we need a Jose Mourinho team of bastards from 2005-06 – or a modern day Mikel Arteta one – to compete.
The idea that beautiful football, or any football is now unfashionable and seems to be the ramblings of mad men; Pep Guardiola and Arne Slot in particular.
Liverpool’s head coach is in a precarious position around his recent messaging. He’s adopted more defensive and conspiratorial language of late.
It’s understandable in loads of ways. Slot has faced so much adversity and his team has had bad luck. Refereeing is infuriating in this country, we can all agree.
You feel the Burnley result will become this season’s Nottingham Forest for him.
Slot clearly believes Liverpool deserve more. But sitting with a rain cloud over him during media duties won’t help. He also shouldn’t go gunning against press and supporter narratives that are circling. It’s wasted energy.
The shadow of Jürgen Klopp still looms. The delayed grief of Klopp’s departure still seeps into the psyche. A new crisis means there’s more voice to the notion that ‘Jürgen would know what to do, what to say.’
It was always going to be unfair on Slot as a comparison and one of the main reasons stepping into the job after the German was risky.
Slot being his own man is something we lauded last season, but it would always be held against him once times got tough.
Another lurking figure is Xabi Alonso. Growing speculation of Alonso to Liverpool meant Slot had to face a farcical question about it in his pre-Marseille press conference.
The romance of it all has taken over some supporters. Notions of Alonso as a hardened Liverpudlian are being drastically exaggerated. The Spaniard has always been something of an affluent nomad who enjoys the cultural offerings of Europe’s finest. I don’t think he’d have any hesitation in managing another Premier League club if the right offer came.
Chances of inserting Alonso mid-season are highly unlikely. Whether or not Liverpool are contemplating a change this summer remains to be seen, but Slot fielding questions about it aren’t fair or respectful to a man who won something we coveted for so long at the first time of asking.
I want Slot to turn this around. I think there’s a world where this manager and team can learn and grow from what has been an incredibly testing season.
Slot must ditch the sense of defeatism which has crept in. Leading Liverpool is hard and can understandably take its toll, but cutting a frustrated and lethargic figure only adds doubt to those casting it.
Liverpool have given us all hope with their latest display in Europe. They have to now galvanise themselves for a top four finish.
No more hard luck stories.
