Arne Slot highlights key tactical difference to Jurgen Klopp ahead of Liverpool season opener

While Liverpool fans have been getting a taste of what to expect from Arne Slot’s Liverpool, supporters of most other Premier League clubs will be wondering how the Dutchman is going to differ from his illustrious predecessor.

Slot was targeted by the Reds in part thank to his Feyenoord side playing in a broadly similar style to Jürgen Klopp ’s Liverpool . That doesn’t mean there won’t be tactical changes though.

The new head coach dismissed claims in his first Reds press conference that his former club had played in a 4-2-3-1 formation. Data collectors had thought otherwise, and Liverpool have certainly been deployed in that framework at times in pre-season. But until we see them in a proper match, at Ipswich on Saturday, it’s impossible to be certain how the Reds of 2024/25 will play.

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However, Slot has provided some insight which helps explain the difference between how Klopp’s side and his own will play. He was speaking to Canal+, with his comments reproduced on the club’s official website .

“There are a lot of similarities with Jürgen Klopp, with the way they played in the past, and I’m hoping we will see these similarities in the upcoming weeks and months,” Slot said. “We like to have the ball, we don’t like the other team to have the ball… but the Premier League is a league where many good clubs are and many clubs want to have the ball, so we have to fight really hard for us to have the ball.”

It would be unwise to read too much into pre-season match statistics, but Liverpool had 63 per cent possession against Real Betis and 61 versus Las Palmas . Only against Arsenal did it fail to dominate the ball, in part thanks to the game state.

“And if we have it, we want to score, we want to be intense in everything we do,” Slot continued. “If we have the ball, we want to score – that’s quite simple of course! We want to be intense in everything we do.”

“Maybe the only slight difference there is, is that after we win the ball, I like to go forward just as Jürgen liked it, but I sometimes like it when players try to keep the ball and not play the difficult ball, where Jürgen or the former regime maybe liked the chaotic scenes in and around the 16 a lot as well. They were really, really, really successful with that for so many years.” Reds fans will hope Slot can enjoy a similar level of success, whatever tactical systems he uses.

Liverpool.com says: The Reds have scored some very Klopp-style goals in pre-season, so it feels unlikely that the style of play is going to alter too radically. But then Slot is building upon the foundation of a third-place finish and a trophy from last season. To change too much too soon would be madness.