Vital: Don’t Judge Slot Against Unreality of Klopp Perfection!

(Free Read) Klopp was elite, but Liverpool didn't win *every* game

Prior to the Bournemouth game, I want to share some thoughts that I drafted prior to the AC Milan win (but didn’t get a chance to finish writing due to life getting in the way), and which will equally apply for quite a few months, and possibly the whole season.

Irrespective of any results over the coming weeks and months, we need to make sure that we don’t judge Arne Slot against an idealised version of Jürgen Klopp, as it’ll be hard enough for him to match the real, sublime version, let alone a version where any bad results, or bad runs of form between 2015 and 2024, are simply forgotten or overlooked.

Because people just aren’t very good at senses of proportion and scale, and memory works in a weird way at times.

Commentators often said “who else?” when Mo Salah scored last season, even though he only scored 17.6% of the Reds’ total goals (25 of 142).

And presuming that they wouldn’t have said such a thing when someone else took a penalty (as, er, it’s no surprise if the penalty scorer is the penalty taker), he only scored 13.6% of the team’s non-penalty goals (18 of 132); a mere fraction more than Cody Gakpo, for example, and no one said “who else?” when Gakpo scored.

But no doubt it feels like Salah scored way more than 13.6% of the Reds’ goals last season. The sense you get, and the reality, aren’t always in line; indeed, they’re often not.

If you see a terrible thing happen in the news or social media, and it’s something that’s happened before, you might think you’re seeing just the tip of the iceberg. And it can be the case.

But sometimes, it’s actually all there is: a few isolated events are the whole iceberg. Studies show that people tend to guess that certain terrible things happen up to 1,000x more frequently than they actually do, because it seems to be happening all the time, and people presume it’s happening everywhere.

We can get a distorted impression, and some things stick in our minds while others fade away.

While Slot and Klopp inherited very different teams, Klopp, with a less-good team but maybe more of a wow-factor upon his appointment (and where you’d expect a ‘bounce’), won only one of his first four league games, and started Anfield life in the league with a home draw vs Southampton, and a home defeat to Crystal Palace (who, looking back, provided two other landmark Anfield defeats).

It took the fifth game to really explode, a 4-1 win at pre-Guardiola Manchester City.

But soon after, only one point from the three games against Newcastle, West Brom (the infamous 2-2 draw at Anfield) and Watford (a 3-0 loss).

Indeed, in his first eight Anfield league games, Klopp’s Reds only beat Swansea City and Leicester.

While that Liverpool team were far from great, they still lost to or drew against teams who were worse. Again, Liverpool were not as good in 2015, but Slot arrives with more pressure than Klopp, in replacing Klopp.

Klopp got some early cup wins in amongst those fixtures, but narrowly, by one goal, against Bournemouth, Rubin Kazan and Bordeaux; before a 6-1 win at Southampton. No Champions League level teams in there. And the home Europa League games against Rubin Kazan and Sion were not won either.

Slot had the advantage of preseason, albeit not much of a preseason with the senior players, due to an insane international summer. He’s already got his big statement 3-goal win in Manchester, but also his early league defeat.

Still, after four league games Slot is at 2.25ppg, whereas Klopp was at 1.25 ppg. That’s also why small sample sizes aren’t too helpful, but at times, all we have to go on.

I don’t accept that because he took a couple of years to eclipse the win% of his predecessor (a mere 52%), and four years to win a major, major trophy, that any manager who struggles for a year or two is going to mirror the eventual success of Jürgen Klopp.

(Ditto Alex Ferguson struggling for up to six years, and certainly having three pretty bad league seasons in the first four.)

Indeed, it can often get used stupidly as proof: not doing very well for the first 1-2 years is a sign of future success. (It’s not.)

But it shows that, even for a lot of managers, with Pep Guardiola and Bob Paisley included (who I’d guess to be two of the five most successful managers in English football history, and perhaps two of the top three?), the first season is never one to be judged on; unless it’s going so badly and is such a horrible mismatch between club and boss that ties have to be cut.

Add Ferguson, and the trio who I’d assume to be the three most successful managers in England based purely on league title-count (and at least two European Cups), and that’s three out of three who didn’t have a great first season.

(The same applies to Mikel Arteta, even if he’s yet to win the major, major trophies, but is an example of a manager whose team got better over time, and Arsenal are at least league contenders, if not yet winners.)

In his first full season (2016/17), Klopp had a midseason run of one win in 10 games, with five defeats, across all competitions. It’s easy to forget such runs. I had, until I checked.

However, prior to the Milan trip I saw a slightly alarming headline about Klopp usually winning these kinds of European games (the kind of occasion “where Klopp delivered” sounds quite definitive) – but he only sometimes won big European away games against teams that were better than average, or even average.

This is where Slot is on a hiding to nothing, even if he did end up winning his first Champions League game with the Reds in convincing style. Winning in Italy is not par for the course.

Klopp was absolutely outstanding as a manager, clearly, and has an incredible record in Europe overall – but remembering only the highlights reduces the reality, almost as a highlights bias.

Away from home, his Reds lost or drew in the Champions League against Spartak Moscow, Sevilla, Roma, Napoli, Red Star Belgrade, Paris St Germain, Barcelona, Napoli (again), Atletico Madrid, Midtjylland, Real Madrid, Napoli (third time) and Real Madrid a second time.

(Then away at Toulouse and Union SG in the Europa League, but with weakened XIs.)

That’s 13 away games in Europe once qualifying for the Champions League in 2017 and dropping out in 2023 that the Reds failed to win, with most ending in defeat; and 15 including the Europa League of 2023/24; and 17 if you include the two finals against Real Madrid.

If you go back further and include the Europa League in his first season, it’s also a failure to win away at Sion, Augsburg, Man United, Borussia Dortmund and Villarreal, plus Sevilla in the final.

That’s 23 European games away from Anfield in which Klopp’s Reds failed to win, even if some of the draws were good results. In some seasons, the Anfield form was what counted, albeit in 2021/22 is an outlier when Liverpool were remarkable on the continent.

Indeed, under Klopp, Liverpool lost sixteen European games away from Anfield.

While Napoli in 2022/23 were an outstanding team, for the two defeats before that they were just a good Italian team. Liverpool lost heavily at Barcelona and Roma (albeit the latter was with a big aggregate lead), and then 4-1 at Napoli for the third defeat in Naples.

My point is that memory is a funny thing, and people rarely recall accurate balances of positives and negatives; the ‘peak-end rule’ is one example where people tend to remember the best experience, and the most recent.

But if something is good overall, maybe more bad times are forgotten; and if it’s bad overall, maybe more good times are forgotten.

If Slot is judged against Klopp ‘winning most of these types of games’, that’s just not fair, as it’s not the truth. (He ‘only’ won almost exactly half his away European games, which is still good, of course.)

Even home games against Real Madrid, who Liverpool face in this group, did not go well, on top of the finals (albeit the Reds played well in a lot of those games).

Managers can also start well and then fade, as can new signings. There’s never any guarantee that anything will work, or will continue to work.

Slot also has this new, complicated and extra-difficult Champions League format to deal with, albeit my expectations remain to win some of the games, see some promising signs, and see what happens.

Besides the farce/bad luck of the Reds having the third-hardest eight games of the 32 teams involved, I like the new format inasmuch as the old one was stale, with the so many teams unable to play so many other teams that the groups ended up being similar each time, and the same teams mostly qualified, to face mostly the same teams in the last 16, before the restrictions were removed. But it could also mean ten games before the round of 16, which is insane.

One of those tough games, away at AC Milan, was a thumping 3-1 win that could easily have been 6-1, with two further woodwork strikes and other big chances.

Arne Slot now has an 80% win-rate; but again, it’s wrong to take that small sample size as proof of future performance, just of an excellent start overall (with one blip).

(And Feyenoord are struggling badly post-Slot, albeit they sold some key players too – then again, they sold many of their best players in 2022, but won the league in 2023, as they’re always selling their best players; but it may obviously be an additional signal of how good Slot is, if Feyenoord really struggle with life after him.)

Similarly, if there are further defeats for Slot’s Reds, it likely won’t signal anything profound.

In this first season, there need to be signs of things working, and evidence of a plan, but it won’t be perfect.

Anyway, I want this article to remain as a reminder, to refer back to, for those days when things don’t go well.

This article is a free read, but comments are for paying subscribers only.