Arne Slot took a light-hearted pop at Jamie Carragher in reaction to a tactial dissection from the former Liverpool defender in recent days.
On Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football, the Scouser analysed the passage of play between the Reds’ two quickfire goals in the comeback win over Brighton last weekend, claiming that the Dutchman wouldn’t have enjoyed how frantic and end-to-end that sequence had been.
However, when he spoke to Carragher after LFC’s 4-0 hammering of Bayer Leverkusen on Tuesday, our head coach took his opportunity to address that on-air analysis directly.
Slot shared a few words with the CBS Sports Golazo panel last night, which included Liverpool’s former no.23, and he sought to address the aforementioned analysis segment.
The smiling Reds boss told Carragher: “I saw your presentation about those two minutes [v Brighton]. Most of the time in your career you’ve been right, but in this situation maybe you weren’t informed well enough of what I like as well!
“I like the high press just as much as Jurgen liked it. I think that’s also one of the reasons why Liverpool, why Richard [Hughes] came to me, that our playing style was quite similar.
“Where I do agree with you Jamie is, maybe with the ball, risk and reward, maybe we wait a bit longer to play the ball in behind. What we always want from our players is that we press them really high and that’s what we did in the moments you showed.”
From the moment that he candidly discussed Liverpool’s tactics on live TV after the opening day win over Ipswich in August, it’s become evident that Slot has no issue with being transparent about the inner workings of his team.
He isn’t averse to dissecting opponents’ setups either, having confidently talked through how he dismantled Manchester United when the Reds won 3-0 at Old Trafford in September even through he was only three matches into his reign.
Having inherited a group of players who’d become so accustomed to Jurgen Klopp’s successful methods, the Dutchman has struck the right balance between remaining true to many of his predecessor’s core principles while injecting a sense of freshness with some subtle yet effective tweaks.
Finding that happy medium has helped Slot to enjoy a far better start as Liverpool head coach than anyone could’ve expected, defying pre-season expectations to begin his reign with 14 wins from 16 matches. Hopefully that’s only the start of something very special at Anfield under the 46-year-old!
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