A week into Liverpool’s pre-season and Arne Slot is getting a real insight into the quality of the squad he has inherited from Jurgen Klopp. The likes of Curtis Jones, Jarell Quansah, Kostas Tsimikas, Caoimhin Kelleher, Harvey Elliott and Conor Bradley have all been present while Mohamed Salah and Wataru Endo joined the contingent earlier this week.
Slot will have a few weeks to wait before the majority of his big guns report for duty at the AXA Training Centre, however, although Dominik Szoboszlai and Andy Robertson are expected back this month.
Alisson Becker, Ibrahima Konate and Diogo Jota are currently enjoying their end-of-season holidays after international involvement for Brazil, France and Portugal, while Darwin Nunez is now set for some time off after Uruguay’s win on penalties over Canada in the Copa America’s third-place play-off. The same applies to captain Virgil van Dijk and Cody Gakpo, whose Netherlands side were beaten by England on Wednesday evening.
Trent Alexander-Arnold and Joe Gomez will be part of the England squad that meets Spain in the European Championship final on Sunday while Luis Diaz will square off with Alexis Mac Allister at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium as Colombia and Argentina go head to head in the Copa America final in the early hours of Monday morning.
It means Slot remains without many of his key men as pre-season continues at pace. Despite that, though, there has been no gentle introduction to the rest of the contingent, with Slot and a new-look backroom staff putting the players through their paces over the last week.
A new era at Liverpool has brought with it a change in direction for pre-season training and the dreaded lactate test under Klopp has been swapped out for a similarly punishing Six-Minute Race Test (6MRT) this pre-season.
The endurance exam, as the name indicates, lasts for six minutes around a 400m race track with the exercise designed for those undertaking it to go as fast as possible to cover somewhere between 1.5 and 2km.
Quansah, Bradley and Sepp van den Berg all took part in the run which was overseen by fitness coach Dr Conall Murtagh and new head of performance Ruben Peeters alongside Slot. Jones and Tsimikas joined later in the day for their own workout. “Just go all in,” Slot told his players ahead of the workout.
“I’m enjoying it a lot,” Slot said. “The pitches are great. The boys are full of energy; Pep [Lijnders] and Jürgen [Klopp] already said to me last season that I’m going to enjoy working with them – and they haven’t lied at all. Full of energy.
“Also the youngsters coming from the Academy, they have the same intensity and the guys are open to learning. The way I see it, the way I feel is that they enjoy them [the sessions] as well. So, the three most important ingredients.
“Yes, I’m seeing [the quality], but the most players that are here at the moment are coming from the U21s and I have to give them a compliment because they are full of energy, like to press, like to counter-press. They have been taught really well.
“And the ones that are here from the first team are giving the right example to the youngsters, so it has been a joy to work with them in the first week.”
It’s not just the running drills that have changed under Slot, however. The goalkeeper department, which is now overseen by Fabian Otte after his involvement with the United States at the Copa America, has seen a new way of working introduced for the glovesmen of the AXA Training Centre.
Fabian Mrozek was caught on camera using special glasses designed to limit his field of vision as he went through some routine training drills over the weekend. It’s a technique favoured by Otte, who was present at the Kirkby base, and is said to be a way of improving reactions and confidence in possession.
With the demands on goalkeepers’ ball-playing ability becoming increasingly important and prevalent in the modern game, the strategy sees the players put on the eyewear and maintain possession under pressure from coaches and large inflatable mannequins used to represent the opposition.
On his new goalkeeping coach, Slot said: “Yeah, he also had a tournament, he was with the USA team. Unfortunately for him, they went out of the tournament. I gave him a few weeks off but he said he wanted to come as soon as he could.
“So he is already in now after one week of holiday. That is what you like to see. Having holidays is important as well, but you like to see staff members and players want to come in as early as they can, join the team and help us for hopefully a very good season.”
Liverpool’s partnership with Peloton has been useful so far this summer with many of the players being asked to get on the running machines and power through in the gym before they moved the training sessions out on the pitches of the club’s £50m Kirkby base.
Jones, Tsimikas, Stefan Bajcetic and Nat Phillips were just some of the players working on their endurance in the gym as the players had the music of Don Toliver and Travis Scott blasting out as they got down to business.
Mohamed Salah looked in peak condition as he underwent some routine drills this week and the Egyptian was all smiles on his first interactions with Slot. The Reds’ all-time top scorer of the Premier League era was wanted to be one of Egypt’s three players aged over 23 at this summer’s Olympic Games in France.
However, the decision was taken for Salah to remain in the care of his club with the 32-year-old said to be desperate to start the season off on the right foot. The uber-professional Salah is determined to remain an integral part of the setup under a new head coach and a full season schedule for Liverpool will go a long way towards ensuring he is 100% for the big kick-off at Ipswich Town on August 17.
With Salah into the final 12 months of his contract at Anfield, there is also a school of thought that suggests a fit and firing No.11 will go a long way towards helping the club’s hierarchy with their own decision on what to do next.
It’s expected that the Reds will now play a couple of friendlies behind closed doors at the AXA Training Centre before flying out to the United States later this month.
The club have just four pre-season friendlies lined up so far and a couple more behind the scenes will help boost the fitness levels ahead of the opener on August 17 against the newly-promoted Tractor Boys.
Liverpool will meet Real Betis in the early hours of July 27, UK time, before friendlies with Manchester United in Philadelphia (August 1) and Arsenal in Columbia (August 4).
The Reds have typically tended to fly to a European destination for a summer training camp in recent years with places like Saalfelden in Austria and Evian-les-Bains on the French-Switzerland border previously favoured by Klopp and his staff.
However, no such trip has been arranged so far, which was thought to be down to Liverpool being in the process of recruiting for Ray Haughan’s replacement as manager of first-team operations in recent weeks prior to Phil Holliday’s appointment earlier this month.
As a result, it looks like Slot will take charge of his new squad in the privacy of the club’s Kirkby training base before getting them Stateside, although confirmation of those have yet to be forthcoming from Liverpool.