Arne Slot makes uncertain Man City admission as Liverpool bid to open 11-point gap

Arne Slot has confessed that he will need to spend more time analysing Manchester City than most other teams. The Liverpool head coach believes that predicting the tactics of Pep Guardiola, who he considers the world’s best manager, is a challenging task.

Slot is expecting Guardiola to adopt a unique approach in their upcoming clash at Anfield, which will be crucial for the Premier League title race. With City having not won in six games across all competitions and suffering three consecutive league losses, they are trailing Liverpool by eight points.

Guardiola is tasked with finding a solution to Rodri’s absence, and Slot is ready to respond to whatever strategy is implemented.

“He was the one who invented – maybe not invented, maybe it was done 100 years ago – or came up with the idea of inverted full backs and then thought, ‘Right, now I’m going to push my centre back (Stones) into midfield’,” Slot said.

“You always see new things or inventions with him. They have a very good and clear playing style. Always an interesting game plan as well. It is always about the players.

“It is not about me against him. It is always the players who make the difference. The only thing is if you play against him, and it’s the same with some other managers in this league as well, you think, ‘Ok, he could come up with this, but he might come up with this, or this…’

“Because he has so many different game-plans. The playing style is almost always the same. They always want to have ball possession, but they can adjust certain positions.

“Analysing them takes even more time than some other teams who always have the same structure. But that’s what I thought about Real Madrid and then they came up with Brahim Diaz playing as a false nine which they have never done before.”

Slot admitted Guardiola has had an impact on his own coaching career: “It had nothing to do with me wanting to become a manager but when I played I always felt that certain balls my team-mates gave were successful, and certain balls were unsuccessful.

“Then, when I started to watch Barcelona, I saw that the successful balls were only the ones that Barcelona played, so that gave me the reassurance that what I thought was the right ball proved to be the right ball. It definitely helped me to create my own idea about football and my own playing style.”

Slot’s analysis this week will have included Tuesday night’s dramatic draw for his former club Feyenoord – who he led to the Eredivisie title in 2023 – against City when they came from 3-0 down in the last 15 minutes.

The Dutch manager is not one for showing sentimentality but even he couldn’t ignore his name ringing around the Etihad Stadium as Feyenoord fans honoured him while goading City.

“What made this game special for me was more sitting at home, putting the volume up and hearing the Feyenoord fans singing my name,” he said.

“That’s the biggest compliment you can get if you leave a club, that the fans still like you. Of course in Holland and for me as a Feyenoord fan, I could hardly believe what I saw.”