ARNE SLOT HAS been used to eyes being on him every day from the first moment he became a coach.
But he will still have plenty to get his head around when he becomes Liverpool manager this summer.
A decade ago he was youth team boss for one of the smallest clubs in the Netherlands, quickly working his way through the ranks of SC Cambuur to the first team, and making such a name for himself that one of the giants of world football had him on their radar following his title-winning exploits at Feyenoord last season.
Slot’s rise to prominence and arrival at Anfield has been borne from the most humble beginnings.
“He’s fair and honest and treats players well, but he can cut you in half with a sentence if he has to,” Shamrock Rovers midfielder Jack Byrne says.
The Dubliner worked under Slot for one season when he was on loan with the Dutch side from Manchester City.
A distinguished striker over a 20-year playing career in his native country, Slot was the 36-year-old assistant to the revered Henk de Jong, and such was his calibre of coaching he quickly assumed more and more responsibility.
“He would join in sessions sometimes and when he would demonstrate what he wanted, you could see straight away how he was different,” Byrne says.
“You knew what he wanted from you straight away. He was loved and respected by players, and the manager loved Arne too because he could just sit back and let him take the sessions. He knew he was a serious coach.”
That is why Slot had no issue with the open-door policy Cambuur had for training sessions.
Fans and members of the public – even rivals if they wished – could attend every day. Attendances would range from the regular average of between 200 to 300 to up to 7,000 when it was the week of the derby with Herenveen in the provincial city of Leeuwarden.
There was no subterfuge or misdirection.
“He didn’t hide how he wanted to play because it was about how well you did it,” Byrne says.
“There would be tweaks here and there but there was no hiding what he wanted to do. They would all turn up and see. It was about showing the fans how you prepare and if the coaching was not up to scratch or the players didn’t buy into it, everyone could see.”
At this stage Slot was not the manager – he would take on that role after Byrne left for Blackburn Rovers in the summer of 2016 – but his influence on how the team played and on individuals became more and more pronounced as the season went on.
At Liverpool he will have to impose himself and his personality as quickly as possible, especially replacing such a dominant figure like Jurgen Klopp.
He was able to do the same as a coach under far less scrutiny at Cambuur, and the basis for earning that influence and trust with players won’t change now.
“You can find out from a coach what they’re like very quickly. There is no waffle with Arne,” Byrne says.
“You can’t get through sessions and seasons like that. It doesn’t work. Everything he did in training was pin-point and intense.
“It was sharp stuff, no waiting, water breaks would be time for two minutes then ‘bang, back at it’. It was all about how we played and imposing our game, there would be very little on the opposition. It was about mastering what we wanted to do.”
Change will be obvious and implemented in a manner that will leave nobody wondering about their roles.
A back four with a diamond midfield and two forwards is the system Slot preferred from day one, and while it’s close to 10 years since Byrne worked with him, the clarity with which he got his message across is evident.
“I had never seen how that shape was used before. The diamond would start with one centre back passing to the other, the bottom of the diamond would peel to the right and the left of the diamond would come in as a second base midfielder,” Byrne begins, the details engrained.
“It would be like a box midfield then and the diamond would flip. The two strikers would then go in between their full backs and centre backs at the top.
“They would just be to the side channel of each centre back. Our full backs would then go right up to top of those lanes, so we would have four up there.
“The idea was to drag their wingers with our full backs because they can’t leave the zone as it would be two on two with our strikers.
“They’d have to leave four. Their wingers would try to drop back and if they didn’t, happy days for us because we had four on four. If they did drop, we had all the ball in the middle of the park and they wouldn’t press us. We could build up there then.
“He will play this way,” Byrne insists. “These top managers who get to the top make tweaks but stick with what they believe in. This is the way his team plays and he will think ‘if we win this is why we win, if we lose this is what we have to do better’.”
So what will that mean for a club that has been so used to a front three under Klopp and a different make-up in midfield?
There will be issues to contend with straight away, like the apparent unease of Mo Salah as he nears the end of his current contract.
“If you let him down or are not doing what the team requires, he will tell you very clearly: in the dressing room, at half time, after games.
“If there are problems on the pitch, he can spot it, and if there are issues off it, he can nip it in the bud. He wasn’t afraid to do that even then and problems wouldn’t linger on.”
More importantly for a strikeforce – not to mention some of the midfield offenders – that has wasted some gilt-edge opportunities in front of goal, Slot likes to take a hands-on approach to improving those in the same position he played in.
There was more time to work on the training ground at Cambuur, often having a full seven days between fixtures, but even with a much more hectic schedule, that desire to improve players is a core tenet of how he operates and perhaps one of the main reasons Liverpool turned to him.
“Doing extras with players, one-on-one work and some of the attacking drills, it was all match-related and sharp stuff that would make anyone who wanted to get better be able to do.
“For me he helped show me about angling passes better, the weight of passes and how strikers should use their body in certain areas to get the best finish possible.
“It was repetition, repetition, repetition.”
Something else that was repeated on a daily basis by Slot and other coaches when referring to players was ‘talents’ rather than calling them by name.
“Yeah, that was different,” Byrne says. “I’d be called Jack the odd time but mostly it was ‘Talent, come here’. It was the same for everyone but we always knew what Arne wanted from us because he got his message across so well.”
All eyes will be on Slot again to see if that is still the case.
