Liverpool head coach Arne Slot speaking to Sky Sports
Arne Slot claims it’s good for football that Liverpool are battling mega-bucks Chelsea for the title when they have spent so little.
Chelsea top the Premier League’s money table and they have a net transfer spend of £653.1million since the summer of 2022. Liverpool are a distant 10th, behind Bournemouth, West Ham and Nottingham Forest, with a net spend of £141.9million in that period.
The Reds’ only buys last summer were Georgia goalkeeper Giorgi Mamardashvili, who has remained on loan at Valencia, and Federico Chiesa, for a combined £35million up front.
“This is what this league table makes interesting now is that there’s one team who didn’t do anything during the summer, except for Chiesa, who hasn’t played for us at the minute, and there’s one team that’s spent what they’ve spent and both are successful,” said the Reds boss.
“I think it’s good for everyone that we are at the moment, competing right up there. It’s not only given to the ones that spent numerous amount of money, but you can also be successful if you just stay with the team you have and look at your academy.
“I think there are several ways of being successful and that it’s also nice and there’s also an identity to first look at your players, or to first look at your academy and see what that brings. That makes football such an entertaining world, that you can be successful in different ways.”
Liverpool made £7.5million in the summer, mainly by selling Fabio Carvalho and Sepp van den Berg to Brentford, and Slot joked Chelsea’s spending could maybe help him persuade the Reds FSG owners to splash the cash.
“Now maybe the owners might think, ‘OK, so the best thing to do is bring no players in at all’,” he smiled. “Maybe I should be happy with how Chelsea do at the moment and I can tell the owners, ‘yeah, but if you bring in £1.2billion, it’s also a possibility to be successful’.”
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