Arne Slot isn’t quite getting the hospital pass David Moyes received when succeeding Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, but should the Feyenoord boss become the latest Dutchman to take on the Premier League, solving Liverpool’s identity crisis will be no easy task.
As recently as a month ago, the relentless Liverpool beast was back to its gegenpressing best, where, had they put away their multitude of chances created against Manchester City, Jurgen Klopp’s side would have thrust their Premier League title charge into overdrive.
Since then, however, the wheels have come hurtling off in desperate fashion for a club dying to give Klopp the ultimate grand finale. Questions will remain as to whether the huge drop-off in intensity mirrors their manager’s dwindling desire to keep going as he heads off into the sunset, but whatever has happened in the past few weeks should worry whoever comes next.
Unlike Ferguson, who left Moyes with a squad no other manager would be capable of guiding to the same heights, Slot, if he is to take the Anfield reins, will inherit a playing personnel bulging with talent. It is just without their high-octane approach that has deserted them in their final hour, Liverpool as a club, as a philosophy, don’t know what it is in its absence.
With so much at stake at Goodison Park on Wednesday night, on a ground Klopp had never tasted defeat in as a manager, we all expected one Merseyside rival to overwhelm the other. Just not this way round.
Everton were first to everything, roared on by a raucous Goodison crowd who smelled blood. Having been humiliated by Premier League laughing stock Chelsea the previous week, Everton won 65 per cent of their duels in the first half, in a game that would ruin Liverpool’s title hopes.
In the Klopp era, that kind of return does not happen. Defeats of course are part and parcel of the game, but to be bested on desire and relentlessness is not in the modern-day Liverpool vernacular. Not in such a history-defining fixture.
With the fire having gone out in the belly of Klopp’s go-to goalscorer, Mohamed Salah, what lies beneath when the beast has been tamed is altogether more challenging to define.
For years, Jordan Henderson was Liverpool’s hydra, the beast with nine heads. Whenever the opposition would have the ball, the skipper would be there, snarling and hassling opponents into submission. Further forward, while his samba feet wowed audiences across the globe, there were few better pressers than Roberto Firmino.
Without such figures in their ranks now, there was always likely to be some drop-off in intensity. The major problem, however, is an absence of the ceaselessness has left a squad lacking in some key areas.
Finishing has been a problem all season – social media trolls would have had a quiet year without Darwin Nunez content – a flaw exemplified by Salah’s yips in recent weeks.
In midfield, as Wataru Endo’s form has waned, Klopp has been left with a talented bunch of square pegs for round holes. Is Alexis Mac Allister a No 6? Is Curtis Jones the real deal? What is Dominik Szoboszlai? All the next manager’s problem.
Then there is the ultimate quandary – the Trent Alexander-Arnold conundrum. He is too good to play full-back, but the positions he takes up as a defender make him even more dangerous, given his other-worldly passing range.
When everything is going well, Alexander-Arnold can transform Liverpool into a different proposition altogether, but his forays into midfield can still leave Klopp’s setup exposed, as happened on occasion at Goodison, when the intensity drops.
The question is, does the next manager want to keep the pressing game alive? Liverpool have known nothing else for the best part of a decade, so transitioning to any other approach is going to be a monumental undertaking.
If Everton can counter the press, however, perhaps it is time to let the philosophy leave with its founding father. As Klopp keeps alluding to, it is not his problem anymore. His successor’s issues, however, are beginning to surface as the German’s title dreams fade.