Report claims Arne Slot sack coming with interim coach ‘sitting by the phone’ as Liverpool boss makes painful ‘100% sure’ claim | OneFootball

It now appears a question of when, not if, Liverpool will call time on the Arne Slot era at Anfield after yet another disappointment on Sunday, and while TEAMtalk sources can reveal what FSG’s plans are with regards landing on a replacement, the Dutchman’s pre-match comments before the draw with Tottenham Hotspur have quickly come back to bite the under-fire Dutchman on the behind.

Liverpool dazzled their way to Premier League title glory in Slot’s first season at the helm last term, as fans celebrated what was assumed at the time was the smoothest of transitions following the departure of the iconic Jurgen Klopp.

But despite sanctioning a club-record spree of £440m (€505m, $600m) on new players last summer in a bid to create a trophy dynasty at Anfield, the Reds’ form has fallen off a cliff this season, and they currently sit a whopping, and quite frankly unacceptable, 21 points adrift of table-toppers Arsenal.

More pertinently, Slot appears to have transformed the defending champions into a bland, uninspired outfit, who look a shadow of last season’s side and now faces a tough task in even qualifying for next season’s Champions League.

Following Sunday’s woeful 1-1 draw with relegation-threatened Tottenham Hotspur, supporters and media alike appear to have seen enough, demanding FSG remove the manager from the hotseat.

However, as TEAMtalk revealed last week, while Liverpool’s owners will review the manager’s future, any decision will be put on hold until the season’s end and with a clear successor now very much setting his sights on the job.

Despite that, an exit from the Champions League this week, with the Reds trailing 1-0 to Galatasaray after the first leg of their last-16 tie, could spell an immediate and abrupt end for Slot.

In light of that, an account made up of five elite reporters on X has revealed that legendary club figure, Steven Gerrard, is ‘ready to drop everything’ to take over from Slot until the end of the season if Liverpool sack the Dutchman.

The account wrote: ‘Exclusive. Steven Gerrard is sitting by the phone right now… desperately waiting for that fateful call from @LFC to swoop in as emergency boss till the end of the season! He’s ready to drop everything and save his boyhood club in their hour of need.’

And while TEAMtalk is adamant that any decision on removing Slot will be held off until the end of the season, comments made by the Dutchman in the build-up to the Spurs game appear to have done little to aid his cause….

Slot’s comments on Liverpool pre-Tottenham now look foolish

Slot, certainly, has not helped himself in recent weeks with some eye-catching comments made to the media. Indeed, sources had suggested to TEAMtalk that his moaning about the drop in quality of the Premier League as a product, while certainly accurate, did not go down well with club bosses, especially given Liverpool’s inability to change the discourse of their season and find a way past a string of seemingly inferior opponents.

Speaking before the clash with Spurs on Sunday, in which the Reds made a relegation-haunted side, who had lost six successive games in the run-up to the game, look better than them, Slot did himself no favours again by claiming he was “100% sure” Liverpool would soon get back on track and improve in the coming games and weeks.

“There’s a lot of potential, I think the players we’ve signed are mainly young players, that’s the model of the club,” the 47-year-old told Sky Sports before Sunday’s Anfield clash.

“Even players signed two or three years ago, Ryan Gravenberch, Dominik Szoboszlai, these players are not 18 or 19 anymore but they have the best years in their careers still to come and that’s also for the players we’ve signed and these signings have adjusted more and more to the Premier League, to the Champions League, to living abroad for the first time in their lives.”

Slot continued: “We’ve won quite a lot of games recently, so that tells you the improvement of the team and the individuals and I’m 100 per cent sure that the best is yet to come because there’s individual progress to be made and is already happening and the longer they play together, it’s been shown all over the world that successful teams usually play long together and that’s what we’re trying to achieve with these players as well.”

Slot also feels his side are starting to show improvements without necessarily getting the results they deserve.

“I’m not saying we are playing the best football we’ve ever seen,” he said. “But in eight out of 10 games, maybe even more, we are playing better than the other team, creating more chances. All the data is in our favour, but that is not always shown in the score.”

Latest Liverpool news: Chilean forward eyed; £121m double Real Madrid raid

Meanwhile, Liverpool have made a move for Chilean forward Dario Osorio, though Arsenal could scupper their plans, according to reports.

Osorio is a 22-year-old winger who plays on the right flank but likes to cut inside on his stronger left foot. He developed in the Universidad de Chile academy before breaking into their first team in January 2022, going on to score 11 times in 51 senior matches.

The winger could, in theory, prove a replacement for Mohamed Salah at Anfield, though a recent report claims Slot has now ‘chosen’ who he wants to replace the iconic Egyptian this summer. Still, TEAMtalk understands their actual No.1 target is someone different entirely…

Elsewhere, ambitious reports claim Liverpool have received a major boost in their bid to sign Eduardo Camavinga – and the Frenchman is not the only Real Madrid star they are targeting, with one of his teammates also being chased in a huge £121m double deal.

And finally, several clubs have made contact with Liverpool over the prospect of signing goalkeeper Giorgi Mamardashvili, TEAMtalk can exclusively reveal.