This Is Arnefield (Director's Cut)

Arne Slot is the new Liverpool manager. But how does the former Feyenoord boss match up to Jürgen Klopp?

The original version of this article was published on April 23. I felt it was worth updating now that Slot has been confirmed as the new Liverpool manager and the season is over, making the data complete. There’s a few extra numbers for good measure too.

The football news cycle moves fast. On Monday April 22, bookmakers gave Arne Slot just a two per cent chance of becoming Jürgen Klopp’s successor at Liverpool. Twenty-four hours later, his odds implied he was almost a two-in-three shot, and the die was cast.

While my knowledge of Feyenoord was more or less non-existent when the news broke, there are a few data points which make for very interesting reading. Slot’s European record is better than it might appear too.

For starters, Feyenoord turned 11 high turnovers - possession regains in the final 40m of the pitch - into goals this season. That was the joint- third most of any team in the top seven leagues (England, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain) in 2023/24. Manchester City recorded 13 while Newcastle notched 12, though both played four more games than Slot’s boys (whose pro-rata record equates to 12.3 in a 38-match season).

Such things can be somewhat random, with finishing the great leveller in football. Teams over- or under-perform against their underlying data all the time, game to game, season to season. Feyenoord might score from high turnovers but it doesn’t mean they press well.

However, another metric suggests they do. They made 6.7 final third possession regains per match this season, the most in the Eredivisie. To put such figures into context without either the data set or the brain power of Ian Graham or Will Spearman, I divide the number of touches which the opposition have in their defensive third by the total of possession regains made there. The lower the figure, the more intense the press. Here’s a look at Slot’s Feyenoord and Klopp’s Liverpool.

This suggests Arne’s boys press in the attacking third at a rate equal to or better than the best Liverpool have offered in most of the last seven campaigns, and above the last three on average. Of course, there are a lot of factors here; teams in the Eredivisie have lower quality players and likely lower quality managers, so may be more vulnerable to a good counter-pressing outfit. But these numbers are certainly encouraging.

The two teams even dominated the same areas of the pitch in 2023/24. Opta have a metric they call Zones of Control, where the pitch is split into 15 sections and the zones are colour-coded based on whether the team or their opponents dominate the touches within it. Behold:

So far, so Liverpool. Here’s how the percentages for each section differ between the teams, from Feyenoord’s perspective.

While not as controlling on the flanks, they look more solid through the middle and that’s something from which Liverpool 2.0 can certainly benefit. But are Feyenoord ultimately any good? They did poorly in the 2023/24 Champions League, losing their final three Group Stage games, failing to reach the knockout phase.

As this is the sum total of Slot’s experience at Europe’s top table - at which Liverpool will be eating next season - that is a mild concern. But before dismissing his continental credentials, consider the below table.

It is the Champions League Group Stage sorted by expected points and then expected goal difference. It shows Feyenoord was the best performing team which did not make it through (as per the green markers in the L16 column) and should’ve topped their section of the draw.

There’s obviously a bigger sample of data in league football. Here’s the expected points table for the Eredivisie this season.

It’s interesting that they had an identical win-draw-loss record of 13-3-1 at home and away. According to the numbers, they should’ve been unbeaten on the road, having only lost the xG battle twice and by just 0.1 both times.

Dominating away matches, even with one of the bigger clubs, has to be the sign of a decent manager. Feyenoord’s only xG defeat at home came against PSV Eindhoven, a match they lost 2-1 on the little matter of actual goals.

PSV were ridiculously good this season, preventing Slot’s side from retaining the Eredivisie title they won in 2022/23. However, Feyenoord improved and recorded the most points in the history of the club. The new Liverpool manager has been responsible for two of their three best league campaigns and three of the top eight.

On a points-per-match basis, Slot also led AZ Alkmaar to their second best season this century, in 2019/20. He is accustomed to challenging for titles, dominating almost every match, and doing so with a fierce high press. That’s not a bad starting point for the next Liverpool manager, is it?

Opta Charts taken from here, Statsbomb post here.