Last season’s champions Manchester City began with a 2-0 win at Chelsea, last season’s runners-up Arsenal began with a 2-0 win over Wolves and last season’s third place finishers Liverpool began with a 2-0 win at Ipswich.
City and Arsenal will both recognise improvements that need to be made, while City perhaps will feel some satisfaction that they failed to beat Chelsea in either league game in the last campaign and are therefore already up on the standards they set last season. But it’s probably Liverpool’s win that feels most significant. Replacing a figure like Jürgen Klopp is tough. Any manager who is at a club for nine years leaves a void when they depart, and all the more so when they are as charismatic and successful as the German. Arne Slot had a decent record in the Eredivisie with Feyenoord, but plenty of managers have found the transition from Dutch football to the Premier League difficult. His start, though, was probably as a satisfying as could realistically have been expected.
There will, obviously, be far tougher tests to come. Beating one of the promoted sides, even away on the opening weekend of the season when they are riding a wave of euphoria, is expected for one of the only three teams the Opta supercomputer believes has more than a 0.2% chance of winning the league. Nobody can say after the weekend that Slot is definitely going to be a success. But what was apparent was how, after a difficult start, he transformed the game with his tweaks at half-time – and, because he comes from the candid school of Dutch football, he was quite happy to explain exactly what he’d done.
There was plenty for Ipswich to be pleased with. Squad size and a lack of resources may do for them in the end, but they pressed high and played boldly out from the back just as they have in winning successful promotions. Southampton did similarly in losing at 10-man Newcastle, and the courage of promoted teams, trying to play the progressive football that got them up, has been a feature of recent seasons. The case of Burnley last year shows that intent isn’t enough. It may not be for Kieran McKenna’s side but, in the first half, without really threatening themselves, they prevented Liverpool from developing any sort of rhythm.
At that point, the temptation was to look at Liverpool and see a side looking a little flat, in need some sort of inspiration. If it had stayed like that there’d have been a lot of talk about the post-Klopp hangover and questions about the lack of transfer activity this season after the arrival of Michael Edwards as chief executive of football and Richard Hughes as sporting director. But it didn’t, and for that Slot deserves credit.
He withdrew Jarrell Quansah for Ibrahima Konaté, concerned about how the 21-year-old was struggling in the air against Liam Delap. Quansah won only 50% of his aerial duels; Konaté won 80%. That relieved the sense of potential threat but also gave Liverpool greater control of the ball, and that allowed them to set pressing traps for Ipswich, using their approach against them.
There was a clear effort in the second half to get Mohamed Salah into positions where he was running one-on-one against the Ipswich left-back Leif Davis. The most obvious, perhaps, was the opening goal, which started with Andy Robertson in the left-back position. Ipswich’s press went to that side of the field to try to pin him in, at which the ball was switched quickly through Alisson to Konaté. Ryan Gravenberch, playing at the back of midfield, gave an option inside, getting beyond Conor Chaplin. That then forced Massimo Luongo infield to cover, leaving Trent Alexander-Arnold with a channel of space in front of him. Gravenberch went forward to Salah on halfway, he knocked it back to Alexander-Arnold and span into the space behind Davis to receive a perfectly weighted return, ran on and crossed low for Diogo Jota to score.
Chaplin and Luongo were perhaps feeling the pace – both were withdrawn soon after – but while it may be that Ipswich ran out of steam, Liverpool also deserve credit for the greater zip and purpose of their passing after half-time. But there were repeated balls over the top to Salah, while Gravenberch was far more involved offering options to his back four, with the movement of Jota drawing covering defenders away. In the second half they had 15 shots as opposed to three before the break, with an xG of 2.6 after half-time compared with 0.1 before.
There are a huge number of issues that will dictate whether Slot is a success at Anfield, but his first test of in-game management, of working out a way of bypassing an opponent’s press, was passed in some style.
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This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email [email protected], and he’ll answer the best in a future edition
