Arne Slot’s understated achievement will fuel Liverpool’s next campaign | OneFootball

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Arne Slot was discussing how difficult the Premier League is. He often does, the man whose results have suggested he has found it easy. Slot forever underlines that it isn’t, not even when Liverpool only need two victories to take the title and their next two opponents are Leicester and Tottenham. “We've shown in the last 32 games that there have only been two or three wins that were quite comfortable, but the rest of them were very, very, very hard work,” he said after Liverpool made hard work of beating West Ham.

It offers an indication into the type of champions they will be: deserving, after just two defeats in 32 games, as frontrunners who have rarely looked in danger of being caught. And yet damned with faint praise: Arsenal have dropped too many points to chase them and, mixed as Liverpool’s performances have been in recent weeks, the question will remain unanswered if they would have cracked under pressure. No one has applied enough to tell.

But, difficult as it can be to win games, Liverpool have done it on 23 occasions. No one has mustered more than 17 victories. It has led to incorrect suggestions the division is weak: rather it is an indication of competitiveness, together with slipping standards at Manchester City, the team who used to make winning look routine and whose triumphs were often emphatic.

Slot is a realist. So are his employers. They did not set him an unrealistic target, but one that was far from a formality. Taking the title will be spectacular overachievement but Slot was charged with something that became mathematically certain on Saturday. “They told me [to] look at the players, give your opinion so we can go into this project in the second and third year but do qualify for the Champions League,” he said.

It is no simple task. Slot noted the talent in the West Ham ranks, with a club who have spent over £100m in each of the last two summers now in the bottom four. He cited the growing competition for a top-four or top-five finish. A big four became a big six with City and Tottenham, then a big eight with Newcastle and Aston Villa. Now Nottingham Forest have gatecrashed their way up to third. “We all know that even the team that is in 16th [or 17th] has very good players but the top eight have incredible players,” he said. And eight or nine into five won't go.

There is a financial significance to Champions League football. Liverpool posted a loss of £57m last year, when they were in the Europa League. Hence the objective Slot was set. “I think it's the main aim of the club because they experienced how much of an impact it is if you're not part of the Champions League,” he said. The economist managers, whether Jurgen Klopp or Arsene Wenger, knew as much. Wenger’s infamous assertion that fourth place was like a trophy would be endorsed in many a boardroom. Mauricio Pochettino won no silverware for Tottenham but was a transformative force. They have regressed without him. The danger was that Liverpool would without Klopp. Not yet.

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In securing Champions League qualification Arne Slot achieved the main goal given to him at the start of the season but now has a 'bigger aim' (AP)

“It is getting more difficult to qualify for the Champions League,” Slot said. Just ask some of Liverpool’s rivals. Tottenham and Manchester United’s only chance lies via winning the Europa League; they are very likely to finish in the wrong half of the Premier League, worse than what looked the worst-case scenario in August. Each has fiscal issues: United have spent like annual Champions League participants and are now short of funds and PSR leeway while Tottenham, Daniel Levy’s critics would say, have not spent enough to qualify.

Meanwhile, Chelsea have spent £1.2bn in three years and have slipped to sixth; they are at risk of a third successive season outside the European elite and coming up with ever more creative ways to pass PSR cannot obscure what colossal, hubristic failure that would be. Aston Villa have speculated to accumulate but their financial balancing act will be harder, and their wage bill may need to be reduced, if they drop into lesser competitions. City have been ever-presents with huge Champions League revenue. Now that status is at risk.

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Having provided the winner against West Ham on Sunday, Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk looks set to extend his stay at Anfield (EPA)

For those with annual expectations of Champions League football, there is no guarantee an exile will be limited to one year. Arsenal spent six seasons out of it before Mikel Arteta dragged them back in. Liverpool qualified only once in seven attempts before Klopp powered their return. When Slot replaced him, it was reasonable to doubt if Liverpool 2.0 would collapse without its architect, if some of those players could perform as well without Klopp, if Virgil van Dijk and Mohamed Salah would leave in 2025.

Slot has supplied the right kind of answers. If the drama remaining in the Premier League campaign lies in the battle for the third, fourth and fifth places, Slot can be an interested observer. He need not worry about the consequences of a failure to book a spot in the Champions League. For Liverpool, the probability of a top-five finish became an inevitability. “I wasn't opening a bottle of wine because we qualified for the Champions [League],” he said. “Now we have a bigger aim.” But having already done the main job he was hired to do this season.