Arne Slot has come under scrutiny at Liverpool this season, and understandably so, but the Reds boss won the league a year ago, and taking over from a huge name is no easy task
04:00, 20 May 2026
Man City manager Pep Guardiola and Liverpool head coach Arne Slot
Man City manager Pep Guardiola and Liverpool head coach Arne Slot(Image: Simon Stacpoole/Offside via Getty Images)
Rewind 12 months or so, and Liverpool had just been crowned as Premier League champions. Arne Slot took on a group of players from Jurgen Klopp and made plenty of them better individually and collectively.
Things can change quickly, of course. Liverpool didn't envisage that this season would go as it has. Qualification for the Champions League should be secured, but Slot's side has toiled for months. The mood now is very different, but that doesn't change what was achieved.
"Absolutely (I needed a new manager to come in)," Mohamed Salah said a year ago when Gary Neville pressed him on Reds boss Slot during a Sky Sports interview.
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"The new manager coming in, he tells you what he needed. He gave me that space and that appreciation and let me talk to him all the time — I think that's what I needed. He told me I was a superstar here and I can make a difference all the time."
Last weekend, Salah effectively expressed a very different view, even if he didn't mention the Dutchman's name explicitly.
While this season has been toxic at times and Liverpool has struggled to kick on from where it was, playing some poor stuff along the way, that doesn't change the fact that Slot has already won a league title.
The 47-year-old admitted recently that he won't change fan opinion before the end of the season, but he remains confident that things can be turned around when the summer arrives and some fresh blood can be brought in.
Arne Slot and Mohamed Salah have endured a tough campaign
Arne Slot and Mohamed Salah have endured a tough campaign(Image: Darren Staples / AFP via Getty Images)
But having already won the league at the first time of asking, he deserves much more respect than he has been afforded in some quarters — and not just on the infamously hostile pages of social media.
A year ago, Slot gave Liverpool fans the day of celebration that they had waited three decades for. He then oversaw a difficult summer and an unprecedented raft of changes.
Chatter about his future is inevitable after 19 defeats in all competitions, but it should also be respectful. Slot is clearly a very good coach.
After all, it would be fair to wonder what Manchester City might look like next season. Pep Guardiola, it appears, will be leaving the Etihad side when the campaign ends, with Enzo Maresca taking over.
As much as Guardiola, like Jurgen Klopp, leaves behind a talented team of players who are on the up again, it would be a bold statement to predict with complete confidence that Manchester City will wrestle the title back from Arsenal again next term on the back of such a change.
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Losing Guardiola will be a seismic moment for a club that has been set up in his image. After a decade at the helm, the Spaniard will leave an almighty gap that somehow needs to be filled.
If Maresca, who has so far only managed Parma, Leicester and Chelsea, rather at the very pinnacle of the game, does take over from Guardiola, he will be embarking on what many would believe to be an impossible job.
That is exactly the position that Slot found himself in two years ago, shortly after being announced by his predecessor on the final day of the 2023/24 season.
Slot took a Liverpool team — a group that had finished third, not a close second, like Manchester City — and won the league title by getting more out of the players that he inherited.
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The downturn since has been regrettable, and there have been things that he could have done differently. The size of that initial achievement, though, no matter your stance on his future from here, should not be downplayed.
With Guardiola exiting, Manchester City might just be about to experience first-hand exactly why that is.