Better than Pep or Mourinho? Slot marches towards record-breaking season with Liverpool

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60 points in 25 games 

©TM/IMAGO

Liverpool got back to winning ways on Sunday, when they welcomed Wolves to Anfield and duly dispatched of their visitors with a 2-1 win in the Premier League. To the annoyance of rival fans, the Reds put a notable dip in form behind them with all three points, following a 2-2 draw with Everton in their previous league match and a 1-0 defeat to Plymouth in the fourth round of the FA Cup. The result now means that Arne Slot’s side remain seven points clear of Arsenal at the top of the league table, with an impressive 60 points from 25 league games. 

Not only is Liverpool’s position in the Premier League impressive in its own right as they march towards the league title, but it has been made even more notable due to the fact that this is Slot’s first season in English football. And following the win over Wolves, Slot’s points tally to date of 60 points in 25 games stands out in a historical perspective too. Since the formation of the Premier League in 1992, only one manager has picked up more points in his first 25 games in charge of an English top-flight side and he had the audacity to call himself “the Special One”. 

Indeed, as we can see in the table above, Slot’s record to date places him second only to José Mourinho’s debut season in the Premier League, when he took English football by storm as Chelsea’s new manager in 2004/05. Remarkably, Slot sits just four points behind Mourinho’s seismic season and level with Antonio Conte’s first season at the Stamford Bridge side in 2016/17. Chelsea’s impressive ability to ride the “new manager bounce” for a number of years is clearly on show in this table, with five managerial stints making up the top 10, including Mourinho’s second spell at the club. 

Interestingly enough, when we then take a look at which managers won the most points across the entire league campaign of their debut season in any given managerial posting, we see some movement in the top 10 list. Mourinho remains first, alongside Conte in second. But former Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini moves into fourth place having won 86 points in the 2013/14 season. Perhaps to the surprise of some Premier League fans, Mourinho’s second spell at Chelsea started off better than Pep Guardiola’s debut season at Man City, while none other than recently sacked Manchester United manager Erik Ten Hag sits eighth after picking up 75 points in his first season at the Old Trafford club. 

So could Slot make history and beat Mourinho to the title of most points won in a debut season in the Premier League? Well, as things stand the Liverpool manager is averaging 2.4 points per league game at Anfield. And when we then consider that there are 13 games left of the English top-flight season, it would suggest that his Liverpool team are likely to win a further 31 points. That would put Slot on 91 points, which would place him third behind Conte on the above table. However, that also puts him well within Mouinho’s record and since there are 39 points up for grabs, Liverpool could still technically finish the season on 99 points. But that would take a truly monumental effort from Slot and his team.