SUNDAY’S game at Anfield is a tale of two managers who have walked into completely different situations.
Arne Slot took over a great team with great players. Ruben Amorim has taken over a great football club with very bad players. In some ways, it’s that simple.
I love Slot. He’s no wannabe Jurgen Klopp. He has simply been himself. He comes over great and seems to have a lovely personality. You couldn’t dislike him.
Slot has not tried to take a great deal of credit, even though he deserves it because he has had the sense not to try to fix something that wasn’t really broken.
He’s never come on and said, ‘We do this now, we’re doing something different’, trying to blow his own trumpet.
He’s not given us any jargon, none of that rubbish we keep hearing as if the game has only just been invented.
Liverpool have cover everywhere. They have five or six forwards who could play in any team.
They have plenty of leaders like Virgil van Dijk. The manager has kept everybody sweet and let good players play.
Manchester City have fallen away, which has been a help to them, we must not forget. But Slot has done really well so far.
At United, Amorim has the job of all jobs after taking over a very average group of players.
They need a new team almost. There’s very few there who are going to take Manchester United where they want to be.
It’s going to take a long time to recover but I like listening to Amorim. He knows what he wants.
Now, as a manager you tell United, ‘I need players who can do this, this and this’.
When I went to Portsmouth, I wanted to play three at the back.
I signed Matty Taylor from Luton for £50,000. He was a left-winger-cum-left-back. He was perfect for me.
Defensively, he was seven out of ten, going forward he was nine out of ten.
United need to find a couple of wing-backs for Amorim. They need a centre-forward. They need players everywhere. But playing the system is not the problem.
It’s no different to Russell Martin at Southampton when people were saying, ‘Oh, he’s passing it out from the back’.
They could have booted it up the field every time they got it — but it wouldn’t make them any better.
At the end of the day, they are not good enough to stay in the Premier League.
United are actually quite well set up to play Amorim’s way.
But in Monday’s 2-0 home defeat to Newcastle he made a big mistake by playing two men who can’t run in the middle of the park.
Casemiro and Christian Eriksen have been great footballers but they’re no longer athletes. They were completely overrun in there.
But at least he has a way he wants to play. The recruitment at United has been shocking but that should change now they have a blueprint of what he needs, rather than signing players willy-nilly.
Managers get the sack but heads of recruitment — or whatever they are called, they all have posh names — hide in the background.
They bring in bad players and managers take the blame.
United and Dan Ashworth parted ways so now it’s down to Jason Wilcox.
If Wilcox doesn’t bring in good players then he should be bang in the frame for the chop as well as the manager.
He is just as responsible for the future of Manchester United, if not more so.
The behind-the-scenes team at Liverpool is fantastic and I know two of them pretty well.
I had Richard Hughes at Portsmouth as a player and I brought in Michael Edwards as an analyst.
They have been good pals since their time there.
Later, I took Michael with me to Tottenham and now he is at Liverpool as the top man. He really understands the game.
Richard is like a football encyclopedia. You name a player and he’ll tell you what he has for dinner. He did an incredible job at Bournemouth.
You think, ‘Where did the left-back Milos Kerkez come from? Where did Antoine Semenyo come from?’ They will keep on bringing in good players.
And Liverpool deserve credit for picking Slot to be the new manager, too.
On Sunday, I can only see a comfortable Liverpool win.
That crowd will love battering United and it will be a great atmosphere. There’s nowhere like Anfield when those fans are singing.
WHEN Wayne Rooney went to Plymouth in the summer, I thought, ‘Wazza, you’ve taken on an impossible job’. And so it has proved.
No disrespect to Plymouth, which are a great football club with huge potential but the team is what it is: Not good enough for the Championship.
They escaped on the final day of last season and were always going to be scrapping to stay up again.
You could have put Pep Guardiola in there… the players simply aren’t good enough.
I like Wayne. When you talk to him, he’s great on the game.
I hope he doesn’t give up. The problem is getting a job where he has a chance to be successful.
But it’s not going to be easy now for him to get that opportunity.
These days, I’m following Coventry’s results closely because my nephew, Frank Lampard, is in charge there.
That’s a tough job but hopefully Frank can get them on the up.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve been a great player — if you want to be a great manager, the most important thing is to have great players.
That’s as true for Frank and Wayne as it is for Slot and Amorim.
