Renovating the Chapel With Arne Slot

Liverpool will replace Jürgen Klopp with Arne Slot this summer. Should we be excited or concerned?

I wanted to find a replacement for Jürgen Klopp when I first launched this Substack a few months ago, so I dedicated an entire series to the topic, using nothing but data to analyse potential candidates from six of Europe’s big leagues.

I delved into England, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Germany. The one major nation that I decided to leave out of my sample? The Netherlands. So what does Michael Edwards do? He goes and appoints a guy from Feyenoord.

Great.

Arne Slot will be Liverpool’s next manager, so why are the Reds appointing him, and what can we expect from the heir apparent to Klopp’s throne?

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When you’re using data to analyse managers, you’re essentially searching for a playing style as opposed to a person. I’ve repeated that message on numerous occasions on this Substack.

Every manager is different, but it was imperative for Liverpool to appoint somebody who coached a dominant game, purely as a means of employing an approach that sides with probability.

Dominance means progressing the ball from deeper areas more often than your opponents. It means finding the penalty box more often, and perhaps most importantly of all, it means generating more shots, ideally from optimal locations. If you’re ticking those boxes every week and you’ve got better players, you’ll be fine.

Well, for those who followed that series from start to finish, you’ll be happy to know that if I had included the Eredivisie in my sample, Slot would have definitely been involved in the conversation. His Feyenoord team are excellent, so let’s go deeper.

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When Slot first arrived in Rotterdam, he took over from Dick Advocaat, who is essentially a Dutch version of Roy Hodgson. Feyenoord needed something new and fresh, and they got exactly that.

Since, Slot has done a similar job to Klopp in his first few years in charge of Liverpool or Borussia Dortmund. He has convinced his players to be more proactive and assertive in all phases, with his defensive game appearing particularly familiar.

So far this season, Feyenoord have demonstrated one of the best defences in Europe. They allow their opponents to generate just 7.7 shots against them per match, with those efforts worth about 0.7 xG. This is a recipe for clean sheets.

Feyenoord manage to achieve their healthy numbers by pressing high and keeping the ball far away from their own goal. They rank second in the Eredivisie for high turnovers and shot-ending high turnovers this season, behind only PSV Eindhoven, who will soon become champions.

They concede just 21.9 progressive passes per match when they are defending, which means they are difficult to play through and places them second from 114 teams across Europe’s big six leagues this season, behind only Manchester City. As for passes into the penalty box conceded, they are the best, ahead of Arsenal in second.

This intense defensive game presents them with a platform to see most of the ball, with Feyenoord averaging around 61.4 per cent possession, the tenth-most across Europe’s big six leagues.

Slot’s men generate about 20.1 shots per match with their possession share, placing them behind only PSV and Liverpool, and their efforts are worth roughly 2.5 non-penalty xG per match, placing them behind only PSV and Bayern Munich, with Liverpool in fourth.

Again, good numbers. So once you merge the attack and the defence together, you get a pretty good picture of a capable unit. Busy in attack, and quiet in defence, which is always what you want.

Once you subtract what they give away in defence from what they create in attack, you’re left with an xG difference of about 1.9 per match, which is outstanding and places them second in the aforementioned 114-team sample, behind only PSV once again.

This is all positive stuff. Feyenoord are dominant, and they are certainly taking care of their results with their performances. They also seem to be better than last season under the hood — having posted an xG difference of 1.1 per match back then — even though Slot won the title and he’s only finishing second this term.

You can almost isolate his impact by looking back at his AZ Alkmaar side. He took charge of them for just one full season in 2019/20, which ended after 25 games due to Covid-19. When the Eredivisie got cancelled that year, AZ were level on points with Ajax at the summit and had a xG difference per match of 1.2, whereas Feyenoord, who were still managed by Advocaat, were posting just 0.7 per match. Now, that landscape has flipped.

But now for the big caveat. The one you’ve all been waiting for. Yeah, I know what you’ve been thinking for the past five minutes. Feyenoord look really good, but this is only the Eredivisie, which is sort of renowned for being a lightweight competition for players who are still developing.

Unfortunately, this is true. Establishing a busy attack and a quiet defence in the Netherlands is a lot easier than in England, simply because mid-table Dutch outfits like Fortuna Sittard, Excelsior and Go Ahead Eagles can’t field the likes of Pedro Neto, Jarrod Bowen or Kaoru Mitoma.

Leeds United bought Feyenoord’s best player in 2022, for example, and then proceeded to get relegated from the Premier League. Slot has experience of managing in Europe — and he did reach the Europa Conference League final just two years ago — but the difference in player quality is massive.

There’s absolutely no chance that his performance numbers hit the same heights on English shores, but a watered down version would also be fine for Liverpool. We just have to hope that he’s not shook by the counter-attacking ability of West Ham United, or the ball-playing prowess of Brighton and Hove Albion. If he is, he’ll learn fast.

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At this point, I think it’s important to reflect on how Liverpool have evolved as a club over the past decade. When Klopp first arrived in 2015, he set about establishing a recognisable playing style, with several buzzwords gradually becoming associated with the Reds.

The modern Liverpool are renowned for being intense. They defend in a proactive manner every single week, with that nature ingrained into every single player. They gegenpress — or counterpress if you’re English — whenever they lose the ball, and they always form a back four. Every player is an attacker, and every player is a defender. These are all relatively basic yet fixed principles that Klopp has consistently enforced.

Indeed, in 2020, Liverpool moved into their new AXA training base, which is big enough to house multiple different age groups all at once unlike the club’s former home, Melwood. The kids in the academy are now expected to play like Klopp is their coach, so that when they get opportunities to shine on the grandest stage, they can almost perform on autopilot.

Conor Bradley has done exactly that over the past few months. He looks at ease playing under Klopp. The same applies to Jarell Quansah and even Bobby Clark. The transition into first-team football has been seamless for those youngsters, because Liverpool have obsessed over the need for alignment from top to bottom for quite a while now.

Remember when Luis Díaz arrived on the scene? He immediately looked like he’d been wearing red for his whole career, and that was because Liverpool’s tactical identity and 4-3-3 system was so prominent when he joined from FC Porto. Scouting for players is a lot easier when you know exactly what you’re looking for.

Replacing the great man is building upon his legacy. And building upon his legacy is not appointing a glamourous name who might have some pedigree, but wants to rip the whole thing up and write his own script at Anfield.

English clubs tend to effectively start again whenever they appoint a new manager. By appointing Slot, however, it seems Liverpool are attempting to establish a degree of continuity on Merseyside. The Dutchman isn’t a Klopp clone, but he shares enough stylistic parallels — particularly against the ball — to be labelled as a disciple of his at the very least.

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This brings us to the structural side of things. One of the more interesting lines to emerge relates to Slot being appointed as a ‘head coach’ rather than a manager. In essence, he will be a key cog in a well-oiled machine as opposed to a king who has total control of the steering wheel.

This is good, and reinforces a message stressed on this Substack over the past few months. The manager is Superman according to your typical Scouser. The manager is usually the star, I get it. But it really doesn’t have to be like that anymore.

If your decision-making process is refined and sophisticated, you can just insert a man like Slot to manage the team. And that’s pretty much it. This appointment feels like Edwards’ attempt to prioritise the process over the individual. Yeah, we could have gone Hollywood and got Thomas Tuchel, but we’ve basically sacrificed some pedigree to keep everyone singing from the same hymn sheet as one harmonious entity.

Do you appoint a celebrity like José Mourinho or Louis van Gaal before simply giving him the keys to do what he wants? No, you get your operation in order and recognise the manager is one of many important people who needs to collaborate towards one goal at your club. The manager is a cog. A vital one, for sure, but a cog nevertheless, and this appointment is evidence of that.

Everything is there for Liverpool to be successful. The squad is already boss, the wonderkids are lying in wait, and the recruitment tends to be pretty good, too, especially when the nerds are left in charge. You just need someone to coach the players to behave as a dominant unit with and without possession, and Slot will do that.

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There are risks attached to this appointment, no doubt, but that was always going to be the case no matter who got the job.

Slot looks like Liverpool’s means of keeping everything the same despite losing the man who built the chapel. He will naturally make a few subtle tweaks based on his own taste, but we’re only talking about a little paint job here. He’s not going to be knocking walls down.