New Liverpool require some Old Liverpool style to finally subdue and overcome tenacious Ipswich

A successful start in the end, then, for Arne Slot’s New Liverpool. But the tiniest pang of concern might be felt at the way it required a bit of Jurgen Klopp’s Old Liverpool to finally see off a spirited Ipswich side who deserve far more than the patronising pats on the head this performance will inevitably elicit. We’ll get round to it ourselves in about 400 words’ time.

For Liverpool the concern is likely to be fleeting. The new manager is, as has been noted on occasion now, working with what he’s got. Liverpool have signed nobody since Jurgen Klopp’s announcement that he was leaving late last year. If their January blank was understandable with the new manager’s identity still unknown, this summer’s utter absence of transfer activity with just two weeks to go is more of a head-scratcher.

In the first half of this ultimately comfortable win over Ipswich there were some pretty clear clues about how Slot’s Liverpool might eventually differ from Klopp’s. There was a definite attempt at a more patient and slower pace to the build-up play. If it all seemed understandably alien to players who in some cases have known almost nothing other than Klopp’s heavy metal chaosball in club football, there was just about enough to hint at how well it might all eventually come together.

The key will be in how effectively they can flick the switch and change the pace. It’s going to take a lot of revolution for this to become a team that looks at its best playing slow, slow, slow. But evolving to slow, slow, quick should be easier and might just be utterly lethal.

The first half was almost entirely the former, and Ipswich – pressing and harrying with an eye-catching blend of great urgency and intensity but also coherence and cunning – shut everything down with minimal fuss. What chances there were in that first half generally fell the way of the hosts; the style and substance on display showed they have more than enough about them to make themselves heard at this elevated level. We’re already absolutely certain that Pep Guardiola is going to be absolutely smitten by them next week and describe McKenna and his team as “so, so, so good, unbelievable” after Manchester City beat them 7-2.

But looking beyond the ludicrously harsh reintroduction to top-flight life handed down by the fixture computer, it’s not hard to see how and why Ipswich can go about staying in this exalted company if they don’t let the largely inevitable early scarring sow seeds of doubt. Just on today’s evidence this already looks like a very good result for Liverpool and we’d wager with some confidence that a 2-0 win here is only going to look better and better as the season progresses.

The second half really was quite brutal, though. Liverpool were an entirely different beast and credit must go to Slot for recognising and amplifying where the strengths of this team lie. There was more urgency and commitment from Liverpool after the break, but also just something far more familiar as Mo Salah took charge of proceedings and Trent Alexander-Arnold set about eyeing those raking line-breaking passes forward that can and have and will continue to throw defences all out of shape.

Ipswich may have controlled the first half – one could even go so far as to say dictated the tempo – but by the time Diogo Jota opened the scoring 15 minutes into the second it was in fact among the more That Had Been Coming goals in Barclays history.

Alexander-Arnold had nearly found the magic ball three times by that point. Jota himself had missed a presentable chance and Luis Diaz an actual sitter. The goal when it did come was classically Kloppian, Salah racing on to a precise forward pass before squaring for Jota to finish precisely, both men making it all look far more straightforward than it was.

Salah himself added the second, a record-breaking ninth Premier League opening-day goal for the brilliant Egyptian, just five minutes later.

There were still two points of encouragement for Ipswich in that second half, though. Firstly that the floodgates remained closed. There was no quit; plenty of teams faced with Liverpool in this mood would have lost that game by four or five from that point. Ipswich remained steadfast and, again, that is something that offers plenty of reasons to be cheerful.

The dizzying, head-spinning way Liverpool were able to turn this game around after the break and so thoroughly alter its whole mood did have a “Welcome to the Premier League” feel to it, sure, but it is still an outlier. The obvious reality is that there really are only a small handful of Premier League teams capable of turning it on as Liverpool did here, and results in those games will not be the ones that define Ipswich’s season. There’s a strong case to be made that the only thing Ipswich really needed to change about this performance was the opposition.

The second good thing about the second half for Ipswich? Ed Sheeran wasn’t there to see it.