Five things Arne Slot must do to save his Liverpool job: Isak, Konate, midfield balance… | OneFootball

Arne Slot is now the second favourite with the bookmakers to become the next Premier League manager to lose his job after overseeing Liverpool‘s worst run of form in over half a century.

Who saw that coming after the Reds splashed the cash in the summer? Liverpool’s shocking 4-1 defeat at home to PSV was their third successive defeat by a three-goal margin and their ninth loss from their last 12 outings in all competitions.

We’ve identified five things Slot needs to do to save Liverpool’s season, and quite possibly his job.

Be decisive

The chopping and changing of late has not been a good look.

From the outside, it looks an awful lot like Slot doesn’t know what he’s doing as he tries and fails to integrate his expensive array of summer signings. He needs to pick a team and stick with it.

For example, Milos Kerkez has struggled badly. It’s not doing him any favours to keep getting called back in.

Andrew Robertson might not be the player he once was, but he offers a more sturdy and dependable presence in the backline.

The Scotland international ought to have a settled run back in the team until they’re out of choppy waters and can afford to integrate Kerkez a bit more gently.

Drop Ibrahima Konate

Kerkez hasn’t been Liverpool’s only defensive problem.

While Virgil van Dijk hasn’t covered himself in glory of late, you imagine the experienced skipper would look considerably better if he wasn’t surrounded by utter chaos and overcompensating as a result.

It’s been an absolute shocker of a season for Konate, who is surely playing himself out of a move to Real Madrid with a series of calamitous displays.

Slot isn’t blessed with defensive depth following the failure to land Marc Guehi and the long-term injury suffered by Giovanni Leoni, but he does have Joe Gomez – a player who won a Premier League title starting next to Van Dijk week in, week out.

The Dutch coach has explained his reluctance to call upon Gomez, given he’s the only defensive cover they’ve got and has a sketchy injury record, but sometimes needs must. If you’re not using him anyway, why worry about him getting injured?

Get Alexander Isak scoring

“Although our rehab team is doing an incredible job, you cannot compare rehab with games of football or training sessions with the team,” Slot told reporters earlier this month, defending Isak for his slow start.

“As much as we try to replicate it, that’s simply not possible. So, again I have to say, give him some time.”

Unfortunately, Arne, time is running out.

It’s ultimately the coach’s job to find some synergy between the club’s record £125million signing and the likes of Mohamed Salah and Cody Gakpo.

Isak has looked on a completely different wavelength, totally stranded and showing few signs of link-up as he became the first player to start their Liverpool career with four successive Premier League defeats.

West Ham, Sunderland and Leeds are a relatively forgiving next three. The injury suffered by Hugo Ekitite should give Isak a proper run.

Slot can be defended if Isak fluffs chances or doesn’t look fit. But if his marquee signing continues looking isolated, that’s on him.

Regain control

Liverpool briefly punctuated this crisis with back-to-back wins and surely their best two performances of the season so far, keeping clean sheets as they dominated Aston Villa and Real Madrid.

It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that coincided with Slot going back to last season’s title-winning formula and a commanding midfield three of Ryan Gravenberch, Dominik Szoboszlai and Mac Allister.

Admittedly, that didn’t quite go to plan in the disastrous defeat to PSV, in which Szoboszlai moved back into his natural position and Curtis Jones was deployed at right-back, but as a building block it’s relatively tried-and-tested.

Get the midfield bossing games again, as it did against Villa and Madrid, and the defence and attack will take care of themselves.

Find some luck

Remember when Liverpool won their first seven matches of the season? Feels like a long time ago now.

Those who believe in the value of underlying data will feel vindicated by the Reds’ subsequent downturn in results, signposted by their not-especially-convincing early-season wins.

But while Liverpool weren’t seven-in-a-row good at the start of the season, nine defeats in twelve feels like a bit of an overcorrection if we’re talking regression to the mean.

Of their recent nine defeats, Liverpool have only been beaten on xG in four of them. They’ve been poor, no doubt, but they only need a bit more rub of the green for things to start going their way again.