When Arne Slot's Red-Affected Red Machine Was in Full Effect

How do Premier League managers respond when their team receives a red card? Few can match up to Arne Slot's handling of Liverpool's against Fulham.

The first season for a new head coach is always fascinating for supporters of their club. How do they compare to their predecessor? How do they use their substitutes bench? Can they deal positively with adversity?

By winning the Premier League in his first season in charge of Liverpool, Arne Slot has emphatically proved any doubters wrong. Few Kopites will have known much about the former Feyenoord boss before he was appointed, yet even without winning a trophy he would’ve given very few reasons to be criticised.

The previous edition of this newsletter asked ‘when did you know?’, in reference to when you first believed the Reds were going to win the 2024/25 Premier League. Whichever match tipped you over the edge of doubter into believer is one thing, but Slot had to impress his players and the fans long before number 20 became close to a certainty.

In the space of four weeks as November turned to December, Liverpool beat four Champions League teams without conceding a goal. Three of them were defending title holders in a big five league too, we’re not talking Slovan Bratislava or Sturm Graz here. Proper darts.

A team must be able to solve problems, not just impress when the going is smooth and good. Leaving aside the post-match skirmish at Goodison Park, the one red card Liverpool have collected in the league this season occurred against Fulham at Anfield in the final month of 2024. They were superb for the 73 minutes they played with 10 men.

It’s worth reiterating three pertinent points from the match review here:

• Fulham were fourth in the expected points table at the time.

• All 16 shots the Reds took were hit from inside the penalty area

• The 2.1 expected goals Liverpool generated remains the third most Fulham have conceded this season

The final fact is particularly startling. How does a team produce that level of offence against one of the best teams in the Premier League (at the time) when at a disadvantage? Liverpool’s expected goal difference of +0.9 in this match is the best by any team that endured a sending off this season.

Bear in mind too that Andy Robertson’s red card was the earliest received by any club in 2024/25. Five of the other six sides who had at least 0.4 xG more than their opponents suffered a dismissal in the 83rd minute or later. Everton’s was after full time, while Brighton’s example is blurred by Crystal Palace receiving two reds of their own.

And then there’s Arsenal. Certain title winners if it hadn’t have been for injuries and red cards. Oh, and Liverpool leaving the strongest ever iteration of the Premier League in their dust. But still, the sendings off, eh? No top flight team has had more this season, with the Gunners taking five points from the five matches in which they went down to 10.

Considering how well Slot dealt with Robertson’s red against Fulham, it feels worth taking a deeper dive into how managers have responded to this brand of setback in 2024/25.

The approach deployed by the Liverpool boss felt remarkable. After his side lost Robertson, Slot moved Joe Gomez from centre-back to left-back, dropping Ryan Gravenberch in to fill the gap. Over half of the game elapsed before he made a substitution.

This behaviour is an example of what fans need to learn from a new manager. Feyenoord collected a 37th minute red card in Prague during Slot’s first campaign in charge. He didn’t change the line up for 42 minutes, with his side then going behind before rescuing a 2-2 draw in stoppage time.

Slot moved quicker when his side had to deal with a 25th minute dismissal in the first match of their Eredivisie title defence in August 2023. However, he let 10 minutes pass, presumably to see how the match might play out, before making a line up change.

The 1-4 shot count in that period against a team who finished the previous season 13th (Fortuna Sittard) probably convinced him something had to be done. By the standards of the 2024/25 Premier League, it was still quite a leisurely response.

Assessing this is hard. Most managers can’t leave it 53 minutes before making a change as Slot did against Fulham because there isn’t that long left when the decision needs making. The closest comparable example also occurred on Merseyside, as Thomas Frank made his first substitution 31 minutes after Christian Nørgaard’s red card at Goodison Park. Like Liverpool, Brentford got a draw, though they were facing vastly inferior opposition.

Other comparisons are partly blurred by red cards which occur close to half time, as managers usually wait until the interval to regroup and reorganise. But if we exclude dismissals from the last five minutes before the break and those which occurred in the final 10, we find managers made their next sub 23 per cent of the way through the time remaining in the game.

Slot waited 73 per cent of what was left of the Fulham clash. The only example in our refined sample with a higher figure was also against Marco Silva’s side, albeit the gap there was between the 76th and 88th minutes. The man behind the decision was Oliver Glasner, who may have wished he acted sooner as Crystal Palace went from 1-0 to 2-0 down in the intervening period.

Most teams unsurprisingly lost the period when playing 10 versus 11, with some grimly holding on to keep the game scoreless in that period. There have been three winners in the relevant timeframes; Liverpool against Fulham (2-1), Newcastle vs. Southampton (1-0) and Arsenal at Wolves (1-0). In the final instance, the losing side later received a red card too, though.

Here’s a table of data for teams who received a red card, sorted by their expected goal difference following the dismissal. Nobody else got close to what the Reds posted against Fulham.

Slot took a risk. By the final 10 minutes his side were playing in something resembling a 3-3-1-2 formation. Liverpool took shots of higher average quality than Fulham, and more of them, at the cost of conceding quite a few themselves.

Let’s review Mikel Arteta’s moves following red cards. He’s had more practice than Slot, after all.

At Bournemouth and Manchester City, the Arsenal boss withdrew his right winger for a centre-back. Considering he was already fielding back fours comprised of men with at least some experience of playing centrally, this was too cautious.

When faced with Brighton and Wolves, Arteta’s first change from the bench was to bring on a left-back to replace a left winger and right midfielder respectively. Only in the loss to West Ham was his first line up switch a like-for-like change.

This micro study of how the two managers reacted in a specific situation neatly sums up the campaign. Slot has outcoached Arteta in 2024/25, being rewarded for a slightly greater sense of adventure. It often feels like Liverpool go out to win whereas Arsenal are looking not to lose.

The Fulham match beautifully illustrated the Dutchman’s coaching capabilities, plus the quality and tenacity of his squad. The opening paragraph of my review of that game ended: “I’ve rarely been more convinced that they can win the league this season.” Point proved, advantage Slot.