If these are still the getting-to-know-you stages for Liverpool’s supporters and Arne Slot, the early signs are they are going to get on just fine. Two games, two wins, two clean sheets — no Liverpool manager has done that since Graeme Souness in April 1991 and, to put how long ago it was in context, that was before the Premier League was even a thing.
Yes, there are still imperfections and yes, the coming days will be important for Liverpool if they do not want to end the summer transfer window as the only club in England’s top division to not add a single recruit. For a club with their ambitions, the need for reinforcements should not be obscured within the warm afterglow of starting the season with back-to-back victories. On the pitch, too, there will be greater challenges than their first two opponents, promoted Ipswich Town and Brentford, who finished 16th last season and were without star striker Ivan Toney, starting next Sunday with Manchester United at Old Trafford, where Slot will experience a very different reception.
Yet the mood inside Anfield could probably be judged by the soundtrack, late in Sunday’s 2-0 victory against Brentford, by which time it was obvious to everyone that Slot’s first league match at Liverpool’s home stadium would be remembered as a happy occasion.
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Jurgen Klopp had come up with the relevant song — “Arne Slot, la la la la la” — when he took the microphone after his final match in charge last season and, as his farewell wish, asked the crowd to make sure his successor felt welcome. Ninety-eight days on, the Kop obliged.
Slot had spent three-quarters of the match with his hands in his pockets, radiating a different kind of energy altogether. He has made it clear since taking the job that there will be none of the chest-beating or fist-pumping that the previous manager went for.
Perhaps too much has been made of the differing body language, anyway. Yes, the fans loved Klopp’s passion. More than anything, they just want to see a winning Liverpool side who play quick, incisive, entertaining football and have a sense of togetherness at the heart of everything. And all that was delivered here.
“All the (former Liverpool) managers would tell you the same,” Slot said in the post-game press conference of the crowd’s reception. “Every manager who comes here feels the warmth of this club and the appreciation by the fans. The most important thing I have to do is make sure we play in the style the fans want to see. That’s what we are trying.”
Slot prepares for kick-off in his first Premier League match at Anfield as Liverpool head coach (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
That felt like an important statement, because Liverpool’s fans might have been forgiven for wondering whether the man who won the 2022-23 Dutch title with Feyenoord would try to impose a slower, more possession-based style on his new team.
On the evidence so far, that is not going to be the case.
Liverpool’s latest win was rooted in the kind of football their fans love to see — chasing down their opponents and playing with the speed, touch and directness that led to Luis Diaz’s opening goal, originating from a Brentford corner and a breakaway that started in the home team’s penalty area. It was, in many ways, a classic of its type for the modern Liverpool.
Not a great deal seems to have changed, just the identity of the man in the dugout.
Arne Slot, Liverpool’s new head coach
Nor did it hugely matter that, as the crowd were serenading the new head coach, Trent Alexander-Arnold was sitting on the bench wearing the expression of a man not in the mood to join in the love-in.
Yesterday was the second game in succession that Alexander-Arnold had been taken off early for Conor Bradley to slot into the right-back position. On this occasion, the interim England manager, Lee Carsley, was in the crowd, thinking ahead to their internationals next month against the Republic of Ireland and Finland. The body language of Alexander-Arnold was such that Slot appeared briefly at his side to offer a few explanatory words.
“He didn’t look that happy,” the Dutchman told reporters. “I understand. Every player wants to play 90 minutes, but I don’t think the players who were on the bench at the start were really happy with the choice I made.
“Trent came back from the national team (having got to the July 14 final of Euro 2024 with England). He had a few weeks off, then came back, and this was only his third game. We have to take care of him, because we need him for the whole season, not just the first few games. The good thing for me is I have a very good backup in Conor.”
Alexander-Arnold was taken off by Slot (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
At some point, it will cease being a ‘He’s not Klopp’ narrative. For now, though, Slot is quickly showing his new audience how he works and, above all, that he is very much The Boss. He has made Liverpool’s managerial switch as seamless as anyone could realistically have hoped, right down to signing off his programme notes for his official home debut with “You’ll Never Walk Alone”.
In the process, he has achieved something the four Liverpool managers directly before him could not do: win that first Premier League game at Anfield. Klopp’s was a 1-1 draw against Southampton. For Brendan Rodgers, it was a 2-2 with Manchester City. Kenny Dalglish’s second coming in the dugout also began with a 2-2, against Everton. Roy Hodgson? That was 1-1 against Arsenal in the first match of the 2010-11 season, featuring a red card for new signing Joe Cole and the underlying sense of a crowd wholly unsure about their new manager.
It feels different with this latest appointment and that is not just because the fans behind his dugout held up a banner that welcomed Slot to Anfield with the words: “We’ve got your back, Arne.”
Perhaps he also noticed the banner that was unfurled before kick-off at the front of the Kop showing five managers — Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley, Joe Fagan, Dalglish and Klopp — who are regarded in these parts as Anfield royalty. It is not easy to warrant a place on one of these banners (Gerard Houllier was left out, despite winning five trophies during a six-month spell in 2001) but he can worry about that later.
First things first. The Slot era at Anfield has begun exactly as he would have wished.
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(Top photos: Sky Sports; Getty Images)
