After Jürgen Klopp departed Liverpool at the end of last season, new boss Arne Slot was faced with a doubly difficult task. Like any recently hired manager, he had to acclimate to a new club and a new set of players. What's more, he had to do all that under the colossal shadow of one of Liverpool's most beloved managers in its storied history. Even the most optimistic of Liverpool fans probably expected a slow, wonky start to the transition. Slot came into a great situation, about as good as any new manager could hope for, but it was still new, and the pressure would ramp up quickly.
A funny thing has happened two months into this season, though: Liverpool has not only been just as good as it was last season, it might even be better. At minimum, the Pool Boys haven't skipped a single beat, rolling out to eight wins in nine matches so far. That start has seen Liverpool top the Premier League table, win both of its two Champions League matches, and begin its League Cup title defense by trouncing West Ham. The only blemish came against a feisty Nottingham Forest on Sept. 14.
How did Slot slide so comfortably into the job? As I pointed out in our Premier League preview, his tactics favor possession more than Klopp's did, but it's not like the German had Liverpool playing with the same intensity that typified his "heavy metal football" back in the Borussia Dortmund days. By necessity—the squad's key players have all been around for years, and Klopp's trademark style is exhausting—and by the shifting tactical balance in England, Liverpool had started to look more like a normal top side in recent years, its pressing a little less psychotic and its possessions a little more patient. With Slot coming in to slow things down even more, the 2024-25 Liverpool side is starkly different than, say, the 2018-19 version that won the Champions League.
That slow-down has had magical effects on a handful of players. No one has improved more under Slot than his fellow Dutchman Ryan Gravenberch. Once a wonderkid at Ajax, Gravenberch's development stalled after moving to Bayern Munich in 2022. After just one season in Germany, Liverpool took a €40 million gamble on the-then 21-year-old midfielder last summer. The returns in his first season were not great. Gravenberch often looked lost between a more defined tactical role under Klopp and the freedom generally taught in the Netherlands. But after that disappointing first season in England, Gravenberch has thrived so far in Slot's set-up.
This season, Gravenberch has been Liverpool's most impactful midfielder. He's doing that without getting on the scoresheet; though he hasn't scored or assisted in his seven league appearances, he has become a complete weapon in the center of the park. Gravenberch serves as a free-roaming No. 6 under Slot, giving him leave to venture forward with or without the ball, while also working hard in defense to shut down counter-attacks. He's averaging nearly 90 percent success rate on his passes this season, including on almost two long balls per game. His 68 passes per game are second only to Virgil van Dijk in the team, and his 1.7 interceptions per game is also second, also to Van Dijk.
Gravenberch simply looks like a different, more involved player, and Slot clearly believes in him; the young Dutchman has played every single minute of every single match in both the Premier and Champions Leagues. His omnipresence in midfield has also allowed his pivot partner Alexis Mac Allister, last year's midfield star, to sit back more often to spray his own long passes forward, giving Liverpool more bite on the ball than it might have if all of its midfielders were the type to slowly push the ball up in the hunt for possession percentages.
This bite has served one specific attacker especially well: Though Mohamed Salah is still the key to everything Liverpool does in attack—and he has four goals and four assists in the league to prove it—the Egyptian is not the leading scorer through seven league games. That designation is reserved for another player who didn't quite reach his full potential under Klopp only to show massive improvement this season: Luis Díaz. The Colombian has had his moments in a Liverpool shirt since his €45 million move from Porto in January of 2022. He hasn't been consistent, though, and sometimes isolates himself on the left wing too much, needing then to rely on his dribbling skills rather than team play and runs into space.
However, Slot has leaned into that aspect of Díaz's game, giving him freedom to both float out on the wing and cut across to the middle as needed in a more fluid front-three strategy. The results have been, in the literal sense of the word, awesome. Díaz has five goals in the Premier League, as well as an assist, and his seven-minute brace against Manchester United in the 3-0 drubbing on Sept. 1 put the game away before halftime.
Slot has also benefitted from Diogo Jota's return to health. Most recently, Jota scored the only goal in a nervy 1-0 win away at Crystal Palace this past Saturday. Palace had been a bit a boogeyman for Liverpool over the last two seasons, with two draws in the 2022-23 season and, crucially, a 1-0 victory at Anfield last April that was the start of the end of the Reds' the title race. On Saturday, the Eagles played unfriendly hosts, even after going down to Jota's ninth minute opener-comma-winner; Palace had more shots on target than Liverpool, and had some dangerous attacks snuffed out by good goalkeeping from Alisson and, after Alisson's hamstring injury, 23-year-old debutant Vitezslav Jaros.
However, this Liverpool side is built for just those types of matches, even if it hasn't had too many of them to prove it. By controlling the game even in the face of a hungry opponent, Liverpool was able to limit those chances as much as possible while applying pressure going the other way, so much so that Palace couldn't commit too strongly in search for an equalizer. Plenty of times under Klopp, this was a facet of the game that Liverpool struggled at, allowing weaker teams to find their way back into matches. So while a 1-0 win against the 18th place team in the league may not look impressive on paper, beating Palace in that manner is indicative of how much Liverpool has changed without changing all that much.
The honeymoon surely won't last all season long. The club is somewhat over-performing statistically, scoring three more goals than its xG would predict, and giving up three fewer in the other direction. Liverpool has also had a relatively soft schedule, having avoided all of the big six save for United (who is a mess anyway), as well as dodging powerhouse middleweights like Aston Villa, Brighton, and Newcastle. That will change quickly. Between now and the Dec. 1 Anfield showdown against Manchester City, Liverpool will face Chelsea, Arsenal, Brighton twice (once in the League Cup), Bayer Leverkusen and Real Madrid in the Champions League, Aston Villa, and also lowly Southampton for the only breather in that stretch. These next six weeks will paint a better picture of who Liverpool is, and if the Reds emerge out of that Dec. 1 match-up somewhere near first place, then I'll feel more confident in saying this is the new norm, somewhat the same as the old norm.
But even if Liverpool were to falter under the upcoming brutal stretch of matches, Slot's leadership should be a calming balm for fans who might have panicked upon Klopp's departure. The German was exactly the manager Liverpool needed after years in the mid-table wilderness, and his rousing personality and high-intensity, high-excitement soccer brought feeling back to Anfield. That's not what the club needs now, though, and while Slot's side has been plenty exciting in this opening surge, it's the way he has calmed proceedings down and let Liverpool's talent shine that is most encouraging. There's no need to reinvent the wheel—and the club certainly didn't try to during a quiet summer transfer window—but Slot is smoothing out the kinks and getting the most out of players who looked like they wouldn't be perfect fits. As a result, Liverpool isn't just flying high, but it's doing it in a controlled ascent, and though turbulence is coming shortly after the international break, Slot has the tools to keep the club in blue skies.
