Liverpool Should Stick With Arne Slot

Maybe not for long with the way things are going. But how many better managers are out there, even at other clubs?

Arne Slot must feel like Homer Simpson. The hairline is very similar, in fairness. Every time he gets rescued from the canyon of a bad performance with some seeds of positivity, Liverpool stumble their way back down the mountainside. The stone of triumph has been replaced with the stone of shame within six months. The weight of it might sink him.

The Reds’ latest in a line of rock bottoms was hit against PSV Eindhoven on Wednesday night. After Virgil van Dijk conceded a ridiculous penalty, Liverpool posted 10 shots worth 1.15 expected goals without reply. But the three chances worth at least 0.22 xG in the final 35 minutes were all for the Eredivisie side, all converted. D’oh.

Plotting the non-penalty expected goals on a timeline shows that the Reds were not behind on this front at any point. When the first shot of the game is from the spot and converted, a chart like this can be a little misleading. It provides a flavour of when each team was dominating though.

The corresponding chart for the Nottingham Forest loss looks broadly similar, with a decent first half followed by a slump after the interval. Bear in mind that the scale changes for each chart so the dominance was not quite so strong. Even so, it should be impossible to lose these two games by a combined 6-1 on non-penalty goals.

The large dips in the charts explain the unlikely outcome. Liverpool push the rock up the hill through a series of mostly low value chances, then see it tumble down the other side when their opponents have much better opportunities.

How much of the blame for this should be assigned to Slot is debatable. He didn’t make Ibrahima Konaté air-kick the ball for PSV’s third goal but he does keep selecting the error-prone Frenchman. Similarly, Slot isn’t at fault for Cody Gakpo missing potential headed equalisers in front of the Kop against Eindhoven and Manchester United. He persists in selecting players who are not fully fit which hinders the team’s attacking potential though.

The pressure could be reaching breaking point. My view? FSG will think that scorelines being worse than underlying numbers is no reason to hastily fire a Premier League winning manager. It’s also worth considering a point in Michael Reid’s review of the PSG match:

[Slot] still, by the way, boasts the best win rate of any manager to take charge of 50+ games in Liverpool’s history (63.2%) - ahead of Klopp (60.9%). Which further highlights how remarkable this drop-off in form is.

As bad as the last two months have been, Slot possesses a much larger body of work at the club which is seriously impressive. It has been amassed against the strongest Premier League there has ever been too.

While that won’t sustain his job security for ever, there’s also the question of who is out there who could better manage a group of grieving young men who are bereft of confidence? With FSG assessing data to answer that question, there’s a good chance their answer will be nobody.