Are Liverpool Europe’s best team? Why Slot’s team should now be considered title favourites

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Liverpool v Man City Sunday 

©TM/IMAGO

When long-serving manager Jürgen Klopp announced he would be leaving the club at the end of the season last November, a fair amount of panic set in among some sections of the Liverpool fanbase. The German won the Champions League and the Premier League with the Reds, and consistently had Liverpool dining at football’s top table. In May, it was announced Feyenoord manager Arne Slot would be his successor. That news again was met with as much apprehension as excitement. Slot had done a fantastic job with Feyenoord, but Erik ten Hag had done stellar work with Ajax but struggled in the Premier League.

Following a quiet summer transfer window, in which Federico Chiesa was Liverpool’s only signing (€12 million from Juventus), there was some uncertainty about how Liverpool would perform this season. However, just 12 Premier League games in, and the Slot machine is already paying out – Liverpool are eight points clear at the top of the table, and have the opportunity to go 11 points ahead of title rivals Manchester City if they beat Pep Guardiola’s team in Sunday’s showdown at Anfield.

They are also top of the Champions League ‘league phase’ with a 100% win record, and in the quarter-finals of the EFL Cup. No Liverpool manager has had a better record at this stage of their tenure in the Premier League. In fact, no manager has in the division’s history since its inception in the 1992/93 season. There is a long way to go and there will be plenty of twists and turns, but after emerging as early outsiders, Slot’s team should now be considered favourites for the Premier League title this season.

Why Liverpool deserve the mantle of Premier League title favourites

While the notion that if Liverpool beat Man City on Sunday then it means that the title race is over should be a theory taken with a pinch of salt, the Reds deserve to now be considered Premier League title favourites. This superb form can now no longer be put down to a ‘new manager bounce’ or a nice run of early fixtures. Slot’s team are here to stay in the title race. The fact that Liverpool’s form has oozed over into the Champions League furthermore supports their case as an extremely strong team right now.

If we look at the forward positions, Liverpool arguably have the most strength in depth across their front-three in the entire division. They have six quality options, all of which boast a market value of €30m+: Luis Díaz (€80m), Darwin Núñez (€65m), Mohamed Salah (€55m), Cody Gakpo (€55m), Diogo Jota (€50m), and Chiesa (€30m). Between those six options there’s a total market value of €335m, and other than Chiesa (who has had injury problems) they have all been firing. While Man City have plenty of options of their own, they have no real back up for striker Erling Haaland, and are heavily reliant on the Norwegian and €150m-valued Phil Foden, who has failed to replicate last season’s form so far this term. Fellow title rivals Arsenal also struggle for strength in depth in the attacking positions.

From attack to defence, and Liverpool have conceded the least goals in the entire division, only shipping eight goals in 12 matches. The next best Premier League defence is Arsenal, who have conceded 12. Virgil van Dijk has been back to his best at 33 years of age, whilst there has been a notable improvement in Ibrahima Konaté. But the player who has probably seen the biggest transformation is Slot’s compatriot Ryan Gravenberch. The 22 year old has been adjusted to be Liverpool’s holding midfielder and has done a formidable job in protecting the Reds’ back four, and connecting defence and attack in possession. Other players such as Curtis Jones and Dominik Szoboszlai also seem to have improved under Slot’s stewardship.

A firing attack. A sturdy defence. Strength in depth. Liverpool have all the ingredients for success at this moment in time. However, despite having their fair share of injuries to the likes of Jota and Trent Alexander-Arnold, they have avoided losing multiple players in one position, and haven’t had too many lengthy lay offs to key players. That may be something tested during the upcoming busy festive fixture schedule. They must also still go away to five of last season’s top seven. The only team in that bracket they have played away from home thus far is Arsenal, with a 2-2 draw the final outcome at the Emirates against a somewhat depleted Gunners. It’s certainly no foregone conclusion that Liverpool will lift the Premier League title come May, but the time has passed to consider them merely outsiders.

Arne Slot v Jürgen Klopp – Liverpool records compared

Klopp will go down as one of Liverpool’s greatest ever managers. Winning the club’s first ever Premier League title, a Champions League, two EFL Cups and an FA Cup in an era dominated by Guardiola’s spectacular Man City was some achievement. Over nine years he became adored by the red half of Merseyside. Whilst Slot is just 19 games into his tenure, and the sample size is nowhere near large enough to read too deeply into the numbers, when we compare the two bosses’ records per-game as Liverpool manager, it bodes very well in the Dutchman’s favour.

Following Klopp was never going to be easy, but thus far (yes very early) Slot appears to have taken this team a level up whilst stamping his own authority on the side. As we can see in the graphic above, Slot’s points per game record of 2.74 trumps Klopp’s 2.07 by some distance. They are scoring ever so slightly more at 2.32 goals per game compared to 2.22 under the German, but the biggest gap comes in the goals conceded category – just 0.63 goals conceded per game under Slot to 1.12 with Klopp at the helm. The Dutchman has certainly made Liverpool more compact to date and less gung-ho. That could perhaps be another factor that aids this side in going the distance in this term’s Premier League title race.