If Sunday’s match was Liverpool’s first true test of the Arne Slot era, they passed it impressively. Chelsea posed a threat at Anfield, but the Reds controlled the majority of the game and claimed a 2-1 win to keep them at the top of the Premier League table. Meanwhile, Arsenal and Manchester City are experiencing problems.
Arsenal’s 2-0 defeat to Bournemouth means they now trail Liverpool by four points. Mikel Arteta’s team is set to be without the suspended William Saliba and the injured Martin Odegaard and Bukayo Saka for this weekend’s clash with the table-toppers. A Liverpool win would see them open up a seven-point advantage over the Gunners.
City beat Wolves on Sunday, but needed a controversial stoppage time winner from John Stones to do so. Pep Guardiola’s team are just one point off the pace being set by Liverpool, but have looked defensively vulnerable in recent matches against Wolves, Fulham, Brentford and others. City currently have a soft underbelly.
The same can’t be said of Liverpool at the moment. They have the stingiest defence in the Premier League having given up just three goals in eight games. Virgil van Dijk is back to his best while Ibrahima Konate is thriving as the Dutchman’s partner in central defence. Even Trent Alexander-Arnold has been defensively sound.
Liverpool’s attack is also firing on all cylinders. Only Erling Haaland, Cole Palmer and Bryan Mbeumo have scored more Premier League goals this season than Luis Diaz and Mohamed Salah, who have both found the back of the net five times. Add in Diogo Jota, Darwin Nunez and Federico Chiesa and it’s clear Liverpool have one of the most stacked attacks in the division.
Midfield is where Slot has done a lot of his best work as Liverpool manager to date. While the Reds missed out on top target Martin Zubimendi in the summer transfer window, Slot has deployed Ryan Gravenberch and Alexis Mac Allister as a deep-lying pairing to give his team control in the centre of the pitch.
Ahead of them, Dominik Szoboszlai has given Liverpool an extra dimension with his late runs into the box and instincts to get forward from midfield. The Hungarian still has more to offer, but is growing into his role as the attack-minded chaos merchant Slot’s system needs to stop becoming predictable.
Much has been made of Slot’s approach in contrast to Jurgen Klopp’s. While Klopp was renowned for his high-intensity, high-risk style of play, his Dutch successor favours a more considered possession approach. Slot, however, hasn’t attempted to reinvent the wheel since taking over at Anfield.
By and large, Liverpool are still playing the type of soccer imposed on them over a number of years by Klopp. Of course, Klopp moved Liverpool closer to being a possession-orientated side towards the end of his tenure, which has helped Slot hit the ground running, but there has been no dramatic ideological overhaul.
Nobody was ever going to replace Klopp as a personality in the hearts of the Liverpool support, but Slot has shown himself to be a commanding character in his own right since arriving in the Premier League. The Dutchman is a straight talker who has already connected with the Anfield faithful.
On top of this, the new Liverpool front office headed by Richard Hughes deserve credit for not jumping into the transfer market when they failed to land their top targets in the summer. Instead, they have remained focus on the task at hand and have placed their faith in the reconstruction work that already been done in past seasons.
Of course, it’s still relatively early in the season and Liverpool have only just started a challenging run of fixtures that will reveal a lot more about them. Having beaten Chelsea on Sunday and RB Leipzig on Wednesday in the Champions League, the Reds now have matches against Arsenal, Brighton (twice), Bayer Leverkusen, Aston Villa, Real Madrid and Manchester City before early December.
Nonetheless, Liverpool continue to impress under Slot. The Anfield club deserve a lot of credit for finding a manager willing to build on the foundations left behind by Klopp. Slot has demonstrated ideas of his own, but rather than being the start of a new era, this season has proved to be a continuation of the last one.
