All last season, Arne Slot enjoyed himself at the press conferences with English journalists. A phenomenon in itself, where this gang of press vultures is just waiting for coaches and players to “lie down”. This allowed Slot to focus on the work at hand, which in turn led to victory, another win, another victory, then the Premier League title in his debut season. When we see Slot squirm in his chair at the press conference ahead of this weekend’s game and spend a long time explaining what he didn’t mean, we see a manager who has taken over the role of Ruben Amorim.
After the midweek League Cup defeat to Crystal Palace, there was a comment from Slot, as part of a larger context, but still entirely possible to take as a complaint about a “thin squad”. When this comes after Liverpool’s crazy deal round of over £400 million, the reactions came.
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Then on Friday came Slot’s answer to what he really meant, frighteningly similar to what Ruben Amorim has been through since the turn of the year.
“-… I firmly believe that an (optimal) squad should have 20-21 players who can play, because if you have too many, it’s already a struggle to get a squad ready. But then you have to keep them in shape. Tell me if I’m wrong, but I think during the week [the reaction after the Palace loss] was about when I said something about the squad we have, and that could have been seen as criticism or an apology?”, Slot begins.
Then it comes.
“What I meant was that if all these players are fit, we have so much quality. This club is in such a good position when you look at the quality we have for the short term and the long term future. But – I’ve used Alex (Alexander Isak) as an example, but I don’t want to go into every single player because players sometimes don’t like it when they’re mentioned as healthy or not – not everyone was ready from the start to play three games in seven days.”
“And when you get four injuries like we have at the moment, it’s a struggle to go into a program like this. I used this to explain my lineup on Wednesday. I didn’t use it as an excuse to lose to Brentford or the loss before or the loss before. I did it because Ibou (Ibrahima Konate) and Virgil (van Dijk) had to play a lot. Joe Gomez missed the entire preseason. Macca (Alexis Mac Allister) missed the whole pre-season,” the Liverpool manager concluded.
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Who, within a few months of the Premier League title, has started talking like “a loser.” Winners don’t have to explain, the results do.
Not good.
