Stumbling Into a New Era

Coming into the season, Liverpool felt like the surefire favorites to win the Premier League. After a relatively easy title win last season, they pulled off one of the most impressive transfer windows in recent memory.

Instead of another title clash with Arsenal and Manchester City, the Reds limp towards a battle for the last European spots.

In Arne Slot’s first season, everything that needed to work did to an incredible degree. Slot’s system proved to work seamlessly in the Prem with an established roster. 

Perhaps no other top club saw the amount of movement in the summer that Liverpool did. While City and United always find themselves bringing in scores of players, Liverpool topped them. However, those two clubs make it their strategy to throw things at the wall.

Liverpool, on the other hand, tends to prefer quieter summers. Rather than adding a glut of players, they have sought to add complementary pieces. However, on the aging side, the club needed the sort of reset they avoided last summer.

Weirdly, Liverpool’s season this year resembles that of a first-year manager in a new league.

Last season’s title win wasn’t a fluke, but it represented the last hurrah of the dying embers of the Klopp era.

As Klopp prepared to depart from Anfield, plenty of players who played key roles began to decline or leave as well. Icons like Trent Alexander-Arnold and Sadio Mané would be almost impossible to replace, just as the German tactician. For a side that aimed to continue their dominance of the Premier League, any delineation could prove costly.

Replacing Klopp with Slot also represented a big risk. While the Dutchman impressed with his Feyenoord side, he lacked the prestige of the German. Especially with the failure of his fellow countryman, Erik ten Hag, many expected the Reds to follow the path of their rivals, United.

Credit: Liverpool FC-Facebook

Almost in defiance of what the club expected, Slot and his team pushed Liverpool to an unexpected title win. While Liverpool still possessed an elite squad, they bucked the expectation of a rebuild that most had. With Arsenal having too much on their plate and City experiencing a season from hell, Liverpool’s consistent play delivered them the title.

Instead of a start to a rebuild or retooling era, Liverpool squeezed the last drops of the title side that Klopp built. In fact, the players whom the German placed his trust in made the major difference down the stretch.

This impact from key vets who knew how titles were won in the Prem proved vital to translating Slot’s system to English shores. With Slot taking inspiration from Klopp, the transition became much easier for the players. Again, the lack of major transfers, combined with a familiar system, allowed the growing pains to subside.

In his first season, Slot pushed back the hands of time to win an impressive title in his first season. However, one can only fight against the winds of change for so long before they blow you away.

Rather than continue to add complementary pieces and slowly replace aging players, Liverpool went crazy in the summer.

Essentially, it involves flooding the team with new players coming in from across Europe.

Under Pep, City’s transfer habit works because the manager and system are greater than the players. Pep’s system allows for almost any player to be replaced with ease. For all its impressiveness, the revolution under Pep took years to stabilize. 

Any manager so early in their term seemed likely to struggle with balancing competing and developing a title side. Understandably, this promised to produce the sort of season that Liverpool is currently experiencing.

Bringing in six players for close to 400 million pounds, Liverpool used this summer to attempt to usher in a new era. However, the players the club bought weren’t long-term projects; rather, they were proven younger talents. The crop of Bundesliga talents, mixed with Premier League-proven additions at key positions, helped raise hopes of another title run.

Despite all the good vibes surrounding these moves, the club still brought in a glut of players for hefty fees. The need to integrate these new additions into Slot’s system and into key positions always necessitated a learning curve. Without the freedom to grow into the system, players like Isak and Wirtz are left out to be ridiculed for their failures.

Slot’s system contains shades of Klopp’s gegenpress, making it easier for those who developed under the German to thrive with the Dutchman. However, plenty of new additions, from Alexander Isak to Milos Kerkez, came from totally different tactics. This explains, to a certain degree, the struggles many of these players have faced in this early part of the season. 

The revolution that the club staved off last season has finally come for the club.

Liverpool’s insane transfer window made these struggles inevitable.

As strange as it sounds, last season’s title win feels like a fluke, not that Liverpool didn’t deserve it, but that it came ahead of schedule. Liverpool’s struggles this season resemble a club moving into a new era.

While the Reds may return to title contention next season, the necessary pains of a new era will dominate this year.