Sunday was a proud day in Arne Slot’s career as he lifted the Premier League trophy in his first season as Liverpool manager but the Dutch coach has already turned his focus to plans for next season.
When Liverpool secured the mathematic guarantee of being champions this season, the Dutch coach already began looking at how to maximise on the early title win.
His players have been flying around Europe to get in some early rest and vacation before returning to England for the formality of their remaining games.
Behind the scenes, sporting director Richard Hughes has been hard at work in talks over new signings with Florian Wirtz, Jeremie Frimpong and Milos Kerkez all close to respective moves to Anfield.
Of course, Slot can’t come out in the press saying that but the Dutch manager did speak to the press after the trophy lift and they were curious to hear about plans for the new season.
Arne Slot responds to questions about how Liverpool are planning to recruit this summer
When asked by reporters about getting potential signings ‘in early’, Slot said that Liverpool will do their best to get the players they want as soon as possible.
Slot said: “We just want good players and ideally you sign them as soon as you can. But it’s not always easy to sign good players, let alone to sign them early in the window.
“But this club doesn’t start working from today onwards.
“There is so much hard work being done behind the scenes already this season to find out which targets we have and try to sign them. I have all the confidence that if we’ve addressed the right player that we try to sign that player.
“But let’s see when that’s going to happen and if that’s going to happen because I’m very happy with the squad we already have.”
As always, Slot is correct. There is not too much work to be done to the squad but if the rumoured transfers are accurate, there will be little needed beyond signing Wirtz, Frimpong and Kerkez.
Slot said: “No, radical changes you will probably not see because that would be a bit weird if you won the league. But I just said that if the whole team stays together we can improve, even with this team.
“We need to improve with this team but if we are able to bring new players in then maybe you have to adapt to their qualities as well. But that will never be drastic because this is the playing style I prefer, this is the playing style the club prefers and our fans want to see as well.
“So, we try to find players – if we think we need a new player – that can fit this playing style. But you always adjust towards maybe new things you can expect and you try to improve on this season.”