The delicate balancing act Arne Slot must master to maintain Liverpool’s success | OneFootball

Spending can bring its own problems. Some footballers can be weighed down by their price tags, though there were precious few signs of that when the £100m signing Florian Wirtz found the £69m buy Hugo Ekitike to score four minutes into their Liverpool bows. But some teams can be unbalanced by expenditure.

Arne Slot assessed a first meaningful match after Liverpool gave their defence a £75m makeover and concluded: “We need to be better defensively.” It wasn’t an attempt to make the Community Shield an indictment of Jeremie Frimpong and Milos Kerkez, his deluxe pair of new full-backs. Rather, it was a broader view.

It may be a temporary glitch, and Slot is determined to ensure it is, but he nevertheless considered the evidence of pre-season friendlies as well. It was not merely the two goals Crystal Palace scored at Wembley, their 14 shots, their xG of 2.12 or some fine saves by Alisson.

Slot ran through the goals Liverpool had conceded: four to AC Milan, one to Yokohama F. Marinos, two to Athletic Bilbao. It amounts to nine in four games; indeed, it was nine in the last four Premier League matches after winning the title. Yet, in a curious way, they may matter less than three friendlies and the Community Shield now.

Slot has not paid the best part of £300m to strip a side of its solidity. But the danger can be that strengthening one half of the team weakens another. The Liverpool of Wirtz and Ekitike look an attacking upgrade to their own manager.

“In the whole pre-season we saw how we are able to create more opportunities and dominate maybe even more,” he said. “Last season we had a lot of ball possession but it didn’t always lead to goalscoring situations. Now we are better in creating and getting promising situations than we were in the whole of last season.”

Liverpool threaten a blistering brilliance. But if football can be a zero-sum game, Slot noted that zeroes could be the basis of their success. They won 25 league games last season. In only two of those, against Southampton and Tottenham, did they concede two or more goals.

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Florian Wirtz impressed at Wembley as part of Liverpool's improved forward line (Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

“What made us really strong last season was we mostly won by a goal or a margin of one goal,” Slot said. “That had mostly to do with us keeping a clean sheet or at a maximum conceding one goal. Today we scored twice against Palace. Last season we couldn’t do that once. We beat them 1-0 and had a 1-1 draw at Anfield.”

Maybe a Wembley scoreline was not unfamiliar to a team who had six 2-2 draws last season; but, to put it another way, in the 12 matches they were breached at least twice, they only won two.

So far, Slot has seen different issues in different games. “Against Bilbao, we didn't concede one chance at all [from open play] but we conceded two set-pieces which are also a big part of football,” said Slot. Against Palace, Virgil van Dijk looked sluggish; it may prove a one-off, yet when Liverpool only have three centre-backs and one, Joe Gomez, is injured, there is a different concern at the heart of the defence.

On the left, Kerkez was given an awkward bow by Palace’s electric winger Ismaila Sarr but Van Dijk has spent seven-and-a-half years flanked by Andy Robertson. The Hungarian has been bought to be the Scot’s replacement, just as Frimpong takes over from Trent Alexander-Arnold on the other side. Understanding is not forged immediately. Chemistry and communication can take time, distances and positioning factors when full-backs are configured to fly forward.

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Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk (left) looked sluggish against Crystal Palace in the Community Shield (The FA via Getty Images)

Then there is the shifting shape of the midfield. Slot has introduced a more creative No 10, in Wirtz. But Dominik Szoboszlai used to press in the final third; so did Luis Diaz and Diogo Jota. Szoboszlai and Curtis Jones operated deeper than they used to against Palace; neither is a natural anchor. If it was a temporary arrangement, Ryan Gravenberch will also miss the league opener against Bournemouth, paternity leave being extended by suspension. Alexis Mac Allister may start then but it is notable that, since Martin Zubimendi turned Liverpool down last summer, they have not sought an alternative defensive midfielder.

Gravenberch was reinvented but without one there may be a huge responsibility on a back five, including Alisson, featuring two attacking full-backs. Liverpool’s interest in Alexander Isak is explained, besides by his quality, by the lack of an alternative to Ekitike. “There is not a lot to replace him with, so that’s why I took him off,” said Slot, perhaps encouraging the owners to act in the transfer market.

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Liverpool were beaten in the Community Shield after conceding twice against Crystal Palace (Adam Davy/PA Wire)

But for those who like to play fantasy football, overloading with attackers, Slot is looking to fuse attacking ambition with stability. There are precedents of teams who lost the critical cohesion by adding some stardust, whether Manchester United with Juan Sebastian Veron or Real Madrid with Kylian Mbappe. Slot is looking for tweaks to ensure Liverpool are not their successors.

“We have replaced four players and need some time to either adapt offensively or defensively,” he said. “It maybe needs a little bit of adjustment because we don't concede a lot of chances but we do concede a lot of goals.”

The challenge is to be better going forward than they were last season but just as good in their own half. It is the difficult balancing act Slot has given himself with his buying.