There was a moment, halfway through the first half at the King Power Stadium on Sunday afternoon, while Liverpool moved to an inch of their 20th League title, when an erroneous release of one of their players mounted in the air and went out of the game.
Arne Slot saw him coming, adjusted his body as he fell on his shoulder and caught him in front of the canoe before handing him over to a Leicester City defender. It was the first stellary season of slot in the English game in microcosm. He was a man who refused to drop the ball.
While Liverpool is preparing to be champions anoint at one point this week – it could happen Wednesday if Arsenal lost at home against Crystal Palace, or Sunday if they beat Tottenham in Anfield – there is little room for a debate on who should be crowned director of the year of LMA next month.
Some have sought to plead in favor of Nuno Espirito Santo for the fairly brilliant work he did at Nottingham Forest and others pushed the cause of Andoni Iraola for his superb work in Bournemouth, and Eddie Howe, who led Newcastle to their first domestic trophy for 70 years and whose references are scrambled with each year in management.
But if Mohamed Salah is a shoo-in for the price of the footballer of the year FWA when the vote ends in a few weeks, then Slot, who arrived in the English game last summer after being poache of Feyenoord, richly deserves the distinctions which are about to present himself while the season draws to a close anti-climacy by the domination of his team.
If you want an idea of the Slot’s success scale in Anfield this season, after having succeeded Jurgen Klopp, you just have to take a look at what happened to other English football leviathans when great leaders have retired or distant.
Liverpool manager, Arne Slot, had a first stellar season in the Premier League in Anfield
The Dutchman has helped ensure a transparent transition from the Jurgen Klopp era in Liverpool
Meanwhile, Manchester United is still struggling to succeed in the post-ferguson era
Look at Manchester United Post-Sir Alex Ferguson. They are still deeply caught in the agonies of the transition, even now, 12 years after leaving, and if the drama of his victory in the quarterfinals of the Europa League at more Europa was an example of the beauty of football, it was also a reminder of chaos that still envelops the club.
Arsenal is just emerging from the period of uncertainty and loss of identity that came to them in the years which followed Arsène Wenger in 2018, even if the period of decline began well before the departure of Wenger. A manager as good as UAI Emery could not survive the trauma of this transition.
There were times when it seemed that the task would swallow Mikel Arteta too, and when sadness failed on the Emirates. It has not really been in the past two seasons, especially with the victory in the quarter -final of the Champions League against Real Madrid last week, that the club can say with confidence that they were born again.
The real scale of the success of the location can be measured in the fact that Liverpool has not undergone any of these transition agonies following the emotional and very willed departure of Klopp at the end of last season.
Let us not play when harmful who could have been in the history of Liverpool. Klopp has set the emotional tone of the club more than any manager from Bill. He was populist, as was through. It was a demagogue, as was through. He was intense and relentless, as knew. He encapsulated everything that Liverpool defended, as did aside.
Many, I, including, were waiting for me to take some time to recover from his departure. I thought that the best they could hope for in the first slot season would be to finish in the first four. I thought there was a chance, especially with three of their greatest players who arrived at the end of their contracts, that everything could collapse, of united style.
Liverpool, remember, used to have internal security for moments like this, a talent factory called The Boot Room, informally founded under football giants such as Bob Paisley, Ruben Bennett, Tom Saunders, Joe Fagan, Ronnie Moran and Roy Evans, a production line that has given them continuity for 30 years or more.
Slot, like Klopp, was not part of a succession like that. He has the benefit of the support of a new type of brains Trust, the brilliant recruitment team led by Michael Edwards, CEO of Fenway Sports Group football, and Richard Hughes, club sports director, who helped secure the signatures of Virgil Van Dijk and Salah on new contracts.
Klopp has set the club’s emotional tone more than any Liverpool manager from Bill Shankly
There had been concerns before the season due to the fact that three of their stars – including Mohamed Salah (left) and Trent Alexander -Arnold (right) – had unresolved contract problems
But this season was on him. This season has been on the site of Slot and its style of management and its football intelligence and its human intelligence. It was due to the fact that he was strong enough and sufficiently secure in himself to recognize that Klopp had left him a solid group of players and that a revolution was not necessary.
But what the location has done from there has already marked it as a leading leading talent from that time. Its impact in its first season in the English game was compared to the effect of the arrival of Jose Mourinho in Chelsea in 2004, but, unlike Mourinho, the slot machine does not feel the need to make meretrician gestures or to deceive its own capacities.
He worked with what was given to him. There were no new sumptuous signatures. Slot focused on improving players instead. The most obvious example is Ryan Gravenberch, who had been a marginal figure under Klopp but became the center of the Slot team and was one of the players of the season.
The slit also made Liverpool more solid. They may not be as breathless in the future as under Klopp, and there can be a creative player in the side to match Roberto Firmino, but they have become much less vulnerable in the back. They have become masters of consistency.
It is in a season, remember, when Slot treated with the soap operas concerning the contracts of Van Dijk, Salah and Trent Alexander-Arnold with grace, class and type of emotional intelligence which prevented the saga from having the season derail, as it could have done if he had managed it differently.
If Liverpool wins his five remaining games, they will finish 94 points. Even if they don’t, they are on the target for one of the most beautiful seasons in the past 30 years. They only lost two championship games.
And some still seek to fucking slots with low praise. Some will say it was a bad season. Some will indicate the implosion of Manchester City, for so long in the enemies of Liverpool under Klopp. Some will say that Arsenal strangled, that Chelsea is a joke, that United is irremediable and that the spurs are lost.
But Liverpool is none of this. And it is at the location.
While the other “first six” teams had trouble this year, Slot and Liverpool remained consistent
Eclipped cup
The FA still maintains, ridiculously, that they have not betrayed the FA Cup, but the last stage of the attempt to erase the competition by the Premier League will come on Sunday, when the semi-final between Nottingham Forest and Manchester City will be overshadowed by the Liverpool league conflict with spur and probable title coronation.
Another triumph of planning for the director of the game.
Diamond in the harsh
In the middle of all the applause in progress for Rory McILroy, there should be more than a few words for his shopping cart, Harry Diamond too.
Diamond, one of McILroy’s oldest friends, has taken over in his bag in 2017 and has, at various times in the past eight years, found himself identified by some of the Golf Cognoscenti as a reason for the Dryer Mcilroy’s drought.
Rory McILroy famous with Caddy Harry Diamond after the victory of the North Irish masters
McILroy, said sometimes, needed the firmer voice of a more experienced shopping cart in his ear. McILroy ignored this advice. He never hesitated in his loyalty to Diamond, just as Diamond never hesitated to his loyalty to him.
And this extraordinary masters this Sunday, when McILroy had missed the 6-foot putt on the 18th green who sent his battle with Justin Rose in Play-Off, it was Diamond who inspired her for the last push.
“Well, boyfriend,” said Diamond to him, while McILroy envisaged his chances: “We would have taken this last Monday morning.” He dropped a switch for McILroy.
It was the perfect message at the ideal moment. And it may be one of the things that most liked the Northern Irishman for his victory: no one can again criticize the value of Diamond.
