During his post-match press conference at Hill Dickinson Stadium on Sunday, Arne Slot was made aware of Virgil van Dijk’s comment about his team’s season not being ‘Liverpool-worthy’. And while he would, no doubt, have preferred to bask a little longer in the glow of a derby victory on the royal blue banks of the Mersey, Slot agreed with his countryman.
Well, sort of agreed. He pointed out that his team had been knocked out of the Champions League and FA Cup by Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City respectively, which is disappointing but not exactly embarrassing.
But Slot did admit that they had made an unacceptable fist of defending the Premier League title. True. But at this very moment, Slot is doing a slightly better job than Jurgen Klopp did in the 2020-21 season.
Klopp won his one and only Premier League in the 2019-20 season, amassing a staggering 99 points, don’t forget. But after 33 matches of the following Premier League season, Klopp’s Liverpool had 54 points and sat in fifth position.
After 33 matches of this Premier League season, Slot’s Liverpool has 55 points and sits in fifth position. If memory serves me right, Klopp was not under the same sort of pressure that Slot continues to find himself under.
At the time, of course, Klopp had more credit in the bank. Not only had he won the Premier League in 2019-20, he had won the Champions League in 2018-19 after losing in the 2017-18 final to Real Madrid.
But even so, his defence of the Premier League title in 2020-21 was poor. In the same season, Liverpool were knocked out of the FA Cup in the fourth round by Manchester United and out of the Champions League quarter-finals by Real Madrid.
This season’s FA Cup loss to City came at the quarter-final stage and the Champions League exit to PSG at the quarter-final stage. In the Premier League, Klopp’s class of 2020-21 went on a five-game winning run to end the Premier League season, giving them a total of 69 points.
If Slot’s team does the same, they will finish on 70 points. None of this is to excuse Slot for the unsatisfactory title defence, but just because Pep Guardiola has made it look easy in his time here, it does not mean that it is.
Of course, going into his title-defence season, Klopp did not have an influx of summer signings that cost well in excess of £400million. That is a significant caveat.
But Klopp did not lose players as important as Trent Alexander-Arnold. As each season passes, the compulsion felt by elite players to apologise when they do not maintain standards of previous seasons seems to get stronger and stronger.
Van Dijk’s central defensive partner Ibrahima Konate joined in when he said it had ‘been a bad season by the standards of Liverpool’. He was right. But he was also right when he said ‘Liverpool had this kind of season in the past’. Yep, in the Klopp past. It can happen.
After finishing with 30 points fewer than his side had amassed the previous season, there was never any suggestion Klopp was under pressure and he duly delivered the 2021-22 FA Cup, the 2021-22 EFL Cup, a second-placed finish in the 2021-22 Premier League - with 92 points and only two defeats - and a runners-up finish in the Champions League. That was some season.
It will be a tall order for Slot to replicate that. But on the basis of recent history, he should at least be given a chance.
