Arne Slot arrives at Liverpool with the support of fans, but not necessarily a long time to implement his style of play in the cut-throat world of the Premier League.
A smooth transition from Jurgen Klopp to Slot is what supporters want to see. While most are willing to accept a period of slight inconsistency, the Dutchman is under pressure to make his players click in a new system.
To ensure as smooth a transition as possible, he will need to make full use of pre-season – the club have already announced an extra match following the USA tour.
Thankfully, Slot has had a head start on the players, many of whom won’t return until late July from international duty.
He has been preparing for his new job and gave some insight into his research in his first LFC TV interview.
The new head coach explained: “I’ve seen many games already, I’ve seen many training sessions as well. Of course the fans can see the games, so they know we have some very good players.
“But I’ve also seen a lot of training sessions already and I think this is where you bring the culture, and they are always working hard – like the fans see during the game.”
With platforms such as WyScout making it easier than ever for coaches to watch and analyse from afar, Slot will already have ideas of which players should play where.
The 45-year-old thinks his squad are capable of winning more than 2023/24’s 82 points, and added: “I think in the end we would all love to see Liverpool a bit higher than third place and this is the challenge we are facing now – to build on from what we have.
“I have all the confidence in this because of the players, that we can add a few things where we hopefully can get a bit more points than 82, which is necessary with the likes of Arsenal and City, to end up hopefully a bit higher than we did this season.
“There are two things [why] to do this. Of course to get to know more about the players because mostly you see them during the games.
“And you want to know also what the culture is, how they train and what they are used to.
“I think it’s always interesting if you are the successor of Jurgen Klopp and also Pepijn Lijnders, who does quite a bit of work on the training pitch, to see what their ideas were on the training pitch.
“I said this, we all try to steal a bit from each other – mostly this is done by looking at the games but if you can see the way they train, that can only help you.
“Let one thing be clear: the players are not going to get all the same exercises again – we will implement our own things. But it’s interesting to see what they did also during the week.”
As he alluded to there, Slot already has good knowledge of the Premier League.
While he was developing in Holland, Klopp and Pep Guardiola were battling it out at the top of the English game, something the new coach was watching from abroad.
“I think this has been an era where everybody looked at the Barcelona side of Xavi, Iniesta and Messi and the rivalry there was between Real Madrid with Cristiano Ronaldo being there,” added Slot.
“And I think when that came to an end, the new rivalry in European football came because of Jurgen.
“He managed Liverpool and Pep Guardiola, of course, managed Manchester City and I think for everyone who loves football it was a fantastic era to watch the both of them getting the best out of each other.
“Yeah, I have seen a lot of games of Liverpool, a lot of games of City as well, and when you live in Europe the Premier League is probably the nicest league to follow.”
While Guardiola might not be around at Man City for too much longer, Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal are only improving and Slot could need to break 90 points to win the title with Liverpool.