Replacing a legend is supposed to be hard. It took Manchester United 24 years to win the league after Matt Busby departed and it has been 11 without success since Sir Alex Ferguson left. It took Leeds 18 years to win the league again after Don Revie took the England job, although it could be argued they have never really recovered. It was 12 years after Harry Catterick left when Everton won the league again and they have not won it since Howard Kendall moved to Spain.
The shadows of Rinus Michels, Hennes Weisweiler and Brian Clough still hang over Ajax, Borussia Mönchengladbach and Nottingham Forest. Countless Dynamo Kyiv managers have found themselves asking: “What would Valeriy Lobanovskyi do?” That is always the problem. Football is constantly evolving. Managers must change. But the new manager must strike a balance.
Stay too true to the celebrated predecessor’s methods and the new man risks becoming nothing but a poor imitation, even as football’s cutting edge disappears into the distance; change too much and players, fans and journalists will cry betrayal. Always, if things go wrong, there is the thought of the great predecessor – or in the case of United, the man himself – looking on in disapproval, the whisper around the club: it was not like this in his day.
The assumption was that replacing Jürgen Klopp was going to present a similarly tough challenge. It was not just that he had won a league and Champions League; he embodied the club. Yet, just over two months into Arne Slot’s Anfield reign, Liverpool sat top of the Premier League table before the weekend fixtures and have won three out of three in the Champions League.
It is early days. The fixture list has been relatively kind. Chelsea last Sunday was the first real test Slot’s Liverpool have faced, but they came through that impressively. It may be that a bit of bad luck or a couple of bad results in quick succession could send them into a tailspin. There were iffy moments in the first half against Ipswich, late on against Wolves and, particularly, in the second half against Nottingham Forest. But there have also been highly impressive passages: the second half at Ipswich, after going behind to Milan and the early part of the second half at Manchester United.
Liverpool have historically been good at this. The boot room transition from Bill Shankly to Bob Paisley to Joe Fagan to Kenny Dalglish represents the most successful sustained example of a club adopting a philosophy – not that anybody would have used so grand a word then – and appointing managers who would follow it. No other club anywhere near their level has appointed three successive managers from within.
The boot room is long gone but it may be that Liverpool have once again replaced a great with the minimum of fuss. It helps, perhaps, that while Busby lingered at Old Trafford as general manager and Ferguson has been a regular presence in the stands as a £2m-a-year ambassador, Liverpool managers have rarely had to operate under the sceptical eye of the past. That took ruthlessness in banning Shankly from the training ground, while Paisley and Fagan were such low-key figures that they never seemed to intrude.
Klopp simply left and it perhaps helped that he went on his own terms with a cathartic farewell when he self-consciously passed on the baton to Slot (not that a similar call to back his successor helped when Ferguson yielded to David Moyes).
Arsenal – who Liverpool face on Sunday – have also recently gone through the process of replacing one of their greatest managers. Before anybody gets too carried away with Slot’s start, it is worth remembering that Unai Emery, having lost his first two games after replacing Arsène Wenger – at home to Manchester City and away at Chelsea, the fixture list was not generous – won his next 11 games and went unbeaten for a further 11.
Emery lasted until the end of November the following season, at which point Mikel Arteta came in.
After almost five years in the job, Arteta’s strengths have become familiar and, as is natural, small flaws have come more into focus, notably his side’s ill discipline and unease in the face of adversity, which may in part stem from his own peevish touchline demeanour. However much he may have benefited from being not the one who followed Wenger but the one who came next, the job he has done in transforming Arsenal into genuine title challengers for the first time since 2007-08 is remarkable.
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That timeframe hints at the enormous difference between replacing Wenger and replacing Klopp, which is that Klopp went willingly, somewhere near the top of his game, and bequeathed his successor a side that was far stronger than the one Wenger left.
Arsenal had been drifting for a decade when Wenger finally went, 14 years after his last league title. In that final 2017-18 season they finished sixth on 63 points, 37 behind the champions, Manchester City. Last season, Liverpool only slipped out of the title race in mid-April and ended up third on 82 points, nine behind the champions, City.
Not only that, but Klopp had begun the process of rejuvenation. Some work will be required in the next year or so on the defence – how much will depend on whether Virgil van Dijk and Trent Alexander-Arnold sign new deals – but the nucleus of the front six for the next few years is in place. Slot was starting from a higher base.
What is striking now is how similar the sides are in certain respects. Arsenal were the best defensive side in the Premier League last season; Liverpool have conceded three league goals this season – Kloppball in a more risk-averse coat may prove to be very effective.
After the years of increasingly frenetic and madcap attacking, football appears to be retrenching at the very highest level. Although goals per game in the Premier League was at an all-time high last season, in the latter stages of the Champions League it is falling.
Arteta and Slot are managers of the new caution. The legends are in the past. It is indicative of Slot’s and Arteta’s achievements that, for both clubs, evolution keeps on turning.
