Football Manager, Salah’s fury, and leaky defending: how Slot’s Liverpool career imploded | OneFootball

Ollie Whitmore, Chief football news reporter

Arne Slot won his first Premier League title at Liverpool in lightening quick time, becoming the first manager to win it on debut since Antonio Conte at Chelsea eight seasons prior.

Then came a blockbuster summer transfer window in which the Reds splashed over £400m bringing in world class talents including Alexander Isak, Florian Wirtz, Hugo Ekitike, Milos Kerkez, and Jeremie Frimpong.

Most expected the Reds to cruise to yet another title and kickstart a dynasty at Anfield similar to that of Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, but what they got was far from it – fifth place, scraping into the Champions League, and Slot losing his job.

Here, FromTheSpot looks back on how that came to be just over a year on from his title-winning debut at Anfield.

Reds played Football Manager and lost

In total, Liverpool spent £416.9m on their new additions over the summer, which now has proven to be a quite ridiculous amount of money for what Slot managed to get from them this campaign.

At £125m, Isak was their most expensive signing and scored just three times over the course of 14 appearances this season. Although he was gravely affected by the leg break at Tottenham, the Swede didn’t get going anywhere near quickly enough.

Another player that was far too slow out of the blocks was Wirtz, with five goals and three assists in 33 league games. Though there are far more measures for the quality of a signing in football, goal involvements for a playmaker of his caliber are what matters.

It took the German until the 20th of December to register an assist, the 2-1 win at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, by which point 17 Premier League games had past and the Reds were 10 points off of leaders Arsenal in fifth – right where they ended up.

Slot can count himself slightly misfortunate with the injuries, but ultimately the Dutchman was unable to find a way to fit his diverse cast of world-class talent into a system where they would all flourish.

Their transfer policy resembled how my squads on the popular football management game Football Manager came to be: ‘Who are the biggest talents in world football right now?’ Little care for the cost. For Slot, the impact went beyond club finances.

Hugo Ekitike, in contrast to the above to names, made an instant impact by scoring in the Community Shield match and notched three goals and one assist in his first five matches – two in the opening day victory against Bournemouth.

Though his rate would eventually slow down, finishing the season with 11 goals in 28 matches, he would require enough support in his position to cope with the demands of Liverpool’s packed schedule.

Yet with £125m spent on Isak alone, this appeared to dramatically reduce the Reds’ spending power to then adapt to his injury, as Ekitike suddenly became the only all-out striker to regularly feature in Liverpool’s matchday squad.

Slot experimented with Cody Gakpo in the number 9 position to limited success, highlighting the severe cost in squad depth that the head coach had to deal with throughout the season in light of Liverpool’s spending.

The Dutchman found himself scratching his head on who to put at right-back once Jeremie Frimpong was sidelined, though fortunate in the discovery that midfielder Dominic Szoboszlai could play at full-back all along.

However, he would lose the qualities that Frimpong possessed going forward and while competent, the Hungarian was not a natural.

Salah lashes out from the bench

The winter period was an especially challenging time for Slot. Liverpool won just six games between the beginning of November and the end of January, a run that included a damaging 3-0 defeat to Nottingham Forest and costly draws against Sunderland and relegation favourites Burnley and Leeds United.

The Dutchman had been experimenting with the starting lineup by this point, as mentioned previously, and one of those calls was to bench Liverpool legend Mohamed Salah as the 34-year-old’s attacking output began to run dry.

For a play that is usually quite media shy, it shook the footballing world when he remarkably came out accusing his head coach of having “thrown me under the bus”, following the chaotic 3-3 draw at Elland Road.

The Egyptian said: “I don’t know what to say. It’s funny but I couldn’t believe it. It is a really disappointing result for us as a team because we expect to win a game like that.

“The third time on the bench, I think for the first time in my career. I’m very, very disappointed to be fair. I have done so much for this club down the years and especially last season.

“Now I’m sitting on the bench and I don’t know why. It seems like the club has thrown me under the bus. That’s how I am feeling. I think it is very clear that someone wanted me to get all of the blame.

It soon became crystal clear who that someone was, as Salah claimed that the relationship with Slot had completely deteriorated to the point where he was seriously considering his future at the club.

The writing was on the wall months before Liverpool announced their all-time leading Premier League scorer would leave the club at the end of the season, marking a pivotal moment in Slot’s struggles this season.

His experimentation lost command over a key player in Liverpool’s attack.

Boos as teenage star Ngumoha substituted

The telling sign that Slot was beginning to lose the home crowd was his decision to bring off 17-year-old wonderkid Rio Ngumoha during yet another frustrating draw, this time sharing the points in a 1-1 home tie with Chelsea.

Ngumoha had impressed Anfield, and had saved them previously with a 99th-minute winner at Newcastle, but saw his number illuminated on the fourth official’s board at the side of the pitch and exited amid a chorus of boos from the Reds supporters.

It spoke volumes as the fans brought a resounding criticism upon Slot’s game management, but also given that big money signing Isak was the man coming on to replace him.

This was a pretty embarrassing for the Liverpool hierarchy – their £125m signing was coming on to replace a teenager who cost almost 125 times less than him, and it was a decision reflecting poorly on the head coach.

Liverpool’s leaky defense

The real catalyst in Slot’s career at Liverpool unravelling, however, is his side’s leaky defending.

Liverpool lost 12 of their 38 Premier League games this season, while conceding their highest number of goals (53) in a league campaign since the very first edition of the competition in 1992/93.

The Reds let in 55 that year, indicating just how unprecedented it was for Liverpool to be conceding so many goals under Slot.

Their defending was far too passive in matches that they should have been winning, and no game encapsulates that better than the last-minute 3-2 defeat to Bournemouth.

Liverpool’s diminished ability to cover dangerous spaces in behind and reliably win back the ball were on show, allowing centre-back James Hill far too much time and failing to cut out his through ball into Alex Jimenez on a storming run on the overlap.

At the time, their 44 interceptions ranked second bottom among Premier League clubs and were the fourth worst at recovery runs. By the end of the campaign, they registered the fewest interceptions and fifth fewest recoveries.

Though his side’s 59.3% average possession would make these stats less meaningful, given that they wouldn’t need to make as many if they had control of the ball, their failure to dictate games in crucial moments goes to show how damaging these issues were.

It was something that Slot never quite managed to resolve in his final year at Anfield.

Slot had told The Independent he was convinced he had the backing of the Liverpool board as the season came to an end, but it was not be as it was announced this afternoon that he would be leaving Anfield after a season to forget.

He departs a Premier League winner, but undone by his side’s meagre defence of their crown.