Arne Slot, small steps and a fair appraisal

Arne Slot looks to me like he is doing exactly what most of us said we wanted him to do at the start: strip things back a bit and make Liverpool harder to play through in open play. You have to admit he has more or less managed that so far. The collapse against Leeds came from a penalty and set pieces, Sunderland were not slicing us open every five minutes either.

It has not been the full throttle football people like to dream about, but anyone expecting that straight away, after everything Liverpool have been through, is living in a bit of a fantasy. You are basically asking him to fix the defence, cut out the cheap goals, rebuild confidence and somehow have the attack purring and blowing teams away at the same time. All of that while there is an off-the-pitch bombshell hanging over the club as well. I do not think the performances are especially inspiring at the moment, but you have to give the manager some credit for at least making us harder to score against.

Defensive basics before fireworks

I can see steps in the right direction defensively, even if the attack has clearly suffered as a knock-on. Personally I would rather we did not concede than throw everyone up the pitch and then get done by a simple ball over the top targeting Konate. People moaning that we are slow and not free scoring feel like they are missing the bigger picture a bit.

Yes, we can all fantasise about a perfectly coordinated press and this constant front-foot football, but for now it looks like Slot is just trying to get points on the board, stop us giving away soft goals in transition and start winning duels all over the pitch again. Then, once that platform is there, you work out how to get to the free-flowing, beautiful stuff that everyone craves.

Is Slot capable of more?

Do I think it is beyond him to build that kind of attacking side? No, I really do not. The idea that he is somehow wired to grind out one-goal wins for the rest of his career, even after the club has invested heavily in attacking players, just does not ring true. I am sure he wants us dominating games and blowing teams away every bit as much as we do in the stands. It just feels like we need to put where we are into context and accept it as one step at a time after a few big stumbles.

I have said loads of times that I think Slot has made mistakes. He is still relatively inexperienced at this level and, like every manager alive, he has blind spots. But for me, until he actually loses the dressing room and the whole thing becomes untenable, I want to be fair in how I judge him and look at what he is trying to do game by game rather than react to every flat 90 minutes.

Changes are there if you look

That is why it winds me up a bit when people say he has not changed anything, or that he is just stubbornly persisting with the same ideas because the build-up does not look quick enough for their taste. That is such a lazy way to look at it. He has tweaked plenty over the last four games, and he had to change even more during the last one. To me it is clear and plain to see if you actually watch what is happening off the ball and how we manage certain phases.

You do not have to think everything is perfect to acknowledge that there is a plan there. It just looks like the plan right now is to stop being easy to score against before we worry about being irresistible going forward. And, given where Liverpool have been recently, that does not feel like the worst place to start.

Written by PatrikBurgher: 13 December 2025