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It seems that Liverpool, despite everything, can have their man.
According to ESPN sources, the club have agreed a payment with Feyenoord to buy the final two years of coach Arne Slot’s contract. If Liverpool and Slot manage to come to an agreement, the 45-year-old Dutchman will have the undeniable challenge of, you know, replacing the manager who won every major trophy he could win and re-establish Liverpool as one of the most productive clubs in the world.
No pressure, Arne.
Rather than looking for a big-name manager to update perhaps Jurgen Klopp’s most prominent manager, Liverpool have chosen someone many of their enthusiasts have never heard of. When Klopp joined the club eight-and-a-half years ago, he was already one of the few elite managers in the world. They won the Bundesliga several times and reached the final of the Champions League. Slot, on the other hand, has never had success outside the Netherlands and has officiated six Champions League matches. , in total.
So, ahead of Slot’s arrival at Anfield, we have a few questions. Starting with. . .
The first thing we must not forget here is that this is Liverpool. Former director of football Michael Edwards, who helped build the winning team of the last decade, is back, and the club’s current director of research, Will Spearman, has a Doctor. He studied physics at Harvard and helped discover the “divine particle” before being hired to help who might be a smart football coach.
The fact is that Liverpool’s executive recruitment procedure will be more rigorous, data-driven, focused and objective than that of any other top club in the world. They know what they expect from their coach and, unlike most other clubs, they have tried to figure out how to measure what they expect from their coach. That’s why they chose a manager who no one expected to become Liverpool’s next manager when Klopp announced his departure in January.
Depending on who they hire, it’s evident that Liverpool were looking for a manager who would continue Klopp’s current approach.
The dominant tactical taste at the highest point of the game is explained lately with one word: control. Players like Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola and Arsenal’s Mikel Arteta play in their groups in a way that tries to eliminate risks, on both sides of the pitch. We’re going for more classic defenders than we did five or 10 years ago, and those classic defenders who advance as much as the full-backs would have done in the past. Their games have fewer and fewer possessions because their players play quite conservatively when they have the ball.
He and Liverpool have the idea that the most productive way to win games in the long run is to take risks: to agree with the returning owner, to agree with the other team by running in space, to the pace. The concept is, “Well, we’ve been given better players than you, and for that to come through in the 90 minutes, we want to create the kind of chaos where our forwards have a lot of opportunities to attack in space. ” The opponent will also have plenty of chances, however, Liverpool are confident that their own defenders will be better than the opposing forwards.
Here’s a graph comparing the number of passes allowed through the Premier League team to the average number of possessions consistent with the game:
Liverpool press more aggressively and well than anyone else in the league, sure, but he sees the other most effective pressers being Manchester City, Arsenal, Spurs and Chelsea, or most of the other big clubs in the country. However, the only two groups whose games have more possessions than Liverpool are Bournemouth and Everton. Just behind Liverpool are Luton Town, Crystal Palace and Brentford.
In other words, Liverpool are competitive off the ball (a low number of successful passes allowed) and with the ball (a high number of possessions consistent with the game).
And guess who else is like that? Feyenoord by Arne Slot.
Liverpool’s games feature 94 possessions per game, while Feyenoord have 96. Liverpool teams complete 77% of their transfers, while Feyenoord complete 74%. Liverpool’s average passing rate is 17. 1 metres, while Feyenoord’s is 17. 2 metres. Liverpool move the ball down the pitch at an above-average speed of 1. 26 metres per second, while Feyenoord go even faster at 1. 33 metres per second.
Here’s how Feyenoord compares to the rest of the Eredivisie in terms of expectations consistent with the game differential since Slot took over in the summer of 2021:
If expected goals, or xG, thanks for reading this review, Feyenoord also occupy a moment in the Eredivisie in terms of issues and goal difference since Slot took over.
The quality of a team does not have a direct correlation with the quality of the manager. In fact, it’s not even close to that.
The coach’s job, in the simplest sense of the word, is to make his organization of players perform at a higher point than the average coach would make the players themselves perform. Coaches can only coach what’s in front of them: the team, which is necessarily a representation of the team’s resources.
Although it’s a little harder to know Eredivisie salaries, football money analyst Kieran O’Connor revealed a year ago the monetary records of Feyenoord, the club’s winning season. As he writes in his newsletter The Swiss Ramble: “Feyenoord’s €48. 2 million salary was a matrix. . less than a fraction of Ajax’s record (€109. 4 million) and also lower than PSV’s (€55. 2 million). On the other hand, it was almost double that of PSV. AZ, in fourth place, €25. 3 million.
This season, Feyenoord’s penalty-free xG differential is third in Stats Perform’s Eredivisie knowledge set, dating back to the 2012-13 season. They only advanced through Ajax in 2019-20 and PSV this season.
Therefore, Feyenoord is one of the richest groups in the Netherlands, but not the richest. Slots have them betting at a higher point than almost any other team in the last 15 years, and yet they arguably wouldn’t win the league because one of their wealthier rivals has been even better.
Yes, he’s going to have perfect compatibility at Liverpool.
Remember the 2019-20 Ajax team I just mentioned? That season, Slot was on par with AZ Alkmaar, the fourth richest team in the Netherlands. The season was cancelled due to COVID after 25 games, but Slot’s team drew with Ajax in the most sensible match. the table, with 56 points.
According to salary data from The Swiss Ramble, Ajax’s purchasing power is about four times that of AZ. And while they weren’t as smart as Ajax that season, their plus-1. 02 xG differential puts them in the top 25 of every Eredivisie season. since 2012. Es one of only two seasons of a team he called Ajax, PSV or Feyenoord.
In both AZ and Feyenoord, the Slot groups have scored close to the maximum points that can be expected from a club of their size. Combine that with a taste for the game, and that’s why Arne Slot will be Liverpool’s next manager.
Yes, nerds inserted a handful of variables into their spreadsheets, clicked Enter, and a blinking symbol of Slot’s bald, smiling head appeared on their PC screens. (In case it’s not obvious: it’s sarcasm. )
Obviously, numbers are used to identify conceivable candidates for the position, but then you have to take into account their personality, leadership style, tactical flexibility, attitude towards young players, temperament and many other so-called soft factors. You also can’t literally know those things until you actually hire the person. That’s why recruiting is so difficult, regardless of the field.
However, Liverpool also need a manager who can be more compatible in their decision-making internally than externally. According to The Times of London, Slot’s role will be that of a head coach and not a classic coach. Edwards returned to Liverpool in a new Below him, Richard Hughes of Bournemouth was appointed as their new director of football. I hate the way jokes are still written about “slots”, but yes, Slot will have compatibility with this design. a design quite common in the Netherlands, where the coach coaches the team and has a say in the recruitment of players.
Liverpool’s good luck is based on a brilliant recruitment strategy combined with a brilliant manager who is open to the players who come his way. That seemed to replace after Edwards left the club, as Liverpool went from underrated and already effective players to the likes of Darwin Nunez. and Cody Gakpo, the former, a raw and beloved striker who had just set Liverpool on fire in the Champions League, and the latter, one of the standout players of the 2022 World Cup, a source of inflation. These are the kind of players coaches need. – those who have seen them play well and then believe you bet well on them – but not the kind of players that other people with a broader understanding of the market moves and its dynamics would target.
Sources in the Netherlands told me that Slot was more interested in knowledge than top managers, which likely attracted Liverpool to their new manager. I also wouldn’t be surprised if there was some sort of discussion about player health. It’s taking a look at Liverpool’s last two. seasons, whether filled with major injury crises, and not relating them to the not-easy physicality of Klopp’s approach. For all of Klopp’s virtues, the club doesn’t need this to continue.
In the 2014-15 season, Klopp’s Dortmund suffered one of the most unfortunate seasons in the last 10 years. In the Bundesliga, they finished with a goal differential of plus 5, despite an xG differential of plus 23. 4. Thanks to a season of bad luck on both sides of the pitch, Germany’s second-best team finished seventh.
Klopp looked exhausted after years spent looking to keep up speed with Bayern Munich and a season in which it seemed like each and every rebound was against him. Dortmund also looked content to move on after seventh place. From the outside, it looked like Klopp’s strategies had worn down the post, but in reality: the shots just didn’t go in.
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Then, in the autumn of 2015, when the team was stuttering for the second season in a row under Brendan Rodgers, Liverpool were able to hire one of the most productive managers in the world. Klopp had consistently exceeded his budget at Dortmund and helped popularize the very pressing taste sweeping European football. With the deep bond he had cultivated with Dortmund supporters, he seemed like the ideal manager for Liverpool.
In 2024, there is no better manager for Liverpool. Klopp is leaving, Pep Guardiola is going through the rivalry to swap Manchester City for Liverpool and Carlo Ancelotti is winning trophies with Real Madrid. Beyond those three, no other coach has demonstrated his ability to consistently win at the highest point over a long period of time.
Mikel Arteta sounds great, but we’ve never seen him coach anywhere other than Arsenal, and his good fortune directly coincides with his club becoming much smarter about recruiting and filling the squad with young talent. Xabi Alonso has been enjoying a magical season at Bayer Leverkusen lately, but so far he has only been seen coaching professional football for less than two seasons. Julian Nagelsmann has temporarily sold out his welcome at Bayern, as has Thomas Tuchel. Roberto De Zerbi has been fantastic with Brighton, but he’s also been propelled through the smartest front workplace in the sport.
If you hire a manager in 2024, you’re taking a big risk. That’s Slot because that’s what it should be.
All numbers are verified. He has a lot of charisma. He is curious and open to new ideas. He stepped up at two separate clubs and had them humming at a point far beyond what their wage bill allowed.
But the move from Feyenoord to Liverpool is huge, as is the move from the Eredivisie to the Premier League. The defences that Slot’s team will have to go through in England will be much more organised and much more talented than those they have faced in the Netherlands.
Few Dutch coaches have managed to make the transition from the Eredivisie to one of Europe’s ‘Big Five’. Erik ten Hag is the latest example of a coach who doesn’t understand, but so do Ronald Koeman, Peter Bosz and Mark van Bommel. It doesn’t mean that Slot can’t succeed, but it does at least alter your expectations by one or two percentage points.
The biggest challenge, however, is a tactical, analytical, or translatability challenge. The biggest challenge is that there is no one like Klopp.
Klopp is one of the most charismatic people in the world, let alone in the world of sport, let alone the world of football. He’s a living legend of the sport, and that makes a huge difference when you sign a Liverpool player. – on average, a less position than London, Paris or Madrid – and you can have it with Klopp. Hearing Jurgen Klopp tell you he needs to coach will mean more than hearing it from Arne Slot or anyone else at the club. I could have hired to be the new manager.
This may not be the case forever and, despite the club’s poor results in recent weeks, Liverpool are still in excellent shape for the long term, with a new board intact, a team betting on the top and plenty of youngsters. . talent the team.
Still, whether it’s Slot or anyone else, Liverpool’s next great manager will have to become a wonderful manager during his time at Liverpool. Their current wonderful coach, who will retire at the end of the season, was already a wonderful coach before he was hired.