The Most Interesting Five Minutes of 2024/25

People rarely pay much attention to the nuances in the final game of a season. Arne Slot showed why they should.

Diogo Jota, Legendary Striker

Diogo Jota: Pressing Monster, Pressing Master

The last match of a league campaign never undergoes much in the way of in-depth analysis. Everybody is ready for a break, there’s no need to rake over what went well or badly in what is frequently a dead rubber.

This is even truer when you’ve just won the league. Arne Slot was barely asked about the 1-1 draw with Crystal Palace immediately after the 1-1 draw with Crystal Palace. Who cares about the game when there’s a shiny trophy to show off?

Yet with Liverpool a goal down in the second half, the Dutchman changed the formation in a really interesting way, rolling the dice with a method that’s hard to recall seeing. Maybe the lack of jeopardy enabled Slot to go for broke in unexpected fashion. Nobody wants to lose on trophy day. Even so, there were other, safer moves he could have made.

A few seconds past the hour mark, Ryan Gravenberch is booked for diving. Fair enough; it looked like a dive. Worse was to come for the number 38, not that he knew it.

Slot calls him over to the touchline for a chat. “Wees geen idioot, Ryan,” he might be saying. It’s more likely they are discussing the tactical tweak that is about to be implemented.

While they converse, both sides make a double substitution. Palace go broadly like-for-like, retaining their 3-4-2-1 formation. Liverpool’s move hadn’t been done before. They might never do it again. It’s worth a closer look as part of the bigger picture of Slot’s tactical blueprint, nonetheless.

He opts to use Darwin Núñez to replace Dominik Szoboszlai with Diogo Jota coming on for Ibrahima Konaté. Not at centre-back, obviously.

Reshuffles of this nature had occurred before, just not so extreme. In the defeat to Nottingham Forest, Jones came on for Konaté to leave the Reds with a back three featuring Conor Bradley and Kostas Tsimikas either side of Virgil van Dijk. Various in-game personnel changes left Liverpool fielding Bradley, van Dijk and Gravenberch in defence as they chased an equaliser at Fulham. Neither shift produced a goal.

Against Palace, as the starting attacking trio of Luis Díaz, Cody Gakpo and Mohamed Salah remain on the pitch the Reds are now deploying five senior forwards. This is why Slot chats with Gravenberch, as he needs to move to the heart of the defence. This leaves Curtis Jones as the sole midfielder, so with Darwin up top, Liverpool are now in a 4-1-4-1 formation.

Rafa Benitez would baffle fans by bringing on a left-back when Liverpool needed a goal. The Spaniard reasoned that his side needed to be better in build-up, it wasn’t a lack of forwards which was their problem.

Slot unleashed the opposite of that idea with jam on top. He’s Kylo Ren in The Last Jedi, he’s the Andrea True Connection. More, More, More. How do you like it, Glasner? How do you like it?