“I don’t know Gabriel Martinelli but he comes across as a nice guy,” said Arne Slot. This was moments after the Brazilian forward tried to force Conor Bradley, a Liverpool player, from the pitch in January as he thrashed about in pain with a knee injury that ended his season.
Slot continued, attempting to reason away Martinelli’s actions, talking about football having a problem with time wasting. “You cannot ask Martinelli to think so clear in the 94th minute,” he concluded.
If you did not know Slot was in charge of Liverpool, you’d have assumed he was a spokesperson for Arsenal.
All very balanced and fair-minded, but anyone leading Liverpool needs to know how to wield a sword and when to use a shield while the world around you is burning and you’ve got commentators like Gary Neville, rightly or wrongly, calling Martinelli’s actions “absolutely disgraceful” while branding him an “idiot”.
Arne Slot during his final match in charge of Liverpool (Paul Ellis/ AFP via Getty Images)
Not since Roy Hodgson in 2010 had a Liverpool manager seemed so cowed by an obvious act of hostility. On that occasion, Sir Alex Ferguson said Fernando Torres made “an absolute meal” of John. O’Shea’s challenge, adding: “There is no doubt he tried to get the player sent off.” Not only did Hodgson choose not to fire back, he gave the manager of Manchester United, Liverpool’s greatest rivals, a pass to say whatever he wanted about one of Liverpool’s best players: “Sir Alex (Ferguson) is entitled to any opinion he wants to have…” Hodgson bumbled, deferentially.
There are all sorts of hard measurements that any Liverpool manager or head coach are judged against but they always start with results. Slot ultimately lost his job at Anfield only a year after winning the league for losing 20 matches — including the Community Shield — in 2025-26. He lost hearts and minds remarkably quickly considering his achievements in his first season, but all of this started during a 12-match run from late September where Liverpool lost nine games.
Slot’s problem all along was that there was little else to judge him against. He is not without personality but unlike his predecessor, Jurgen Klopp, he did not try to affect you with words, gestures or particularly strong stances. This was, it should be stressed, all a part of the grand strategy at Liverpool where the cult of the manager either died or has taken a nap since the departure of Klopp, whose force was so great that he was left with little structure to support him.
Slot, as head coach, was more of a middle manager; someone who acted with the objectivity of a civil servant and the occasional bluntness of a corrections officer. There was little else to love Slot for: he and the system around him made it entirely about the football and the football alone. When the football is bad, this is what happens.
In deciding to sack him, Liverpool acknowledged that the challenges of leading a Premier League team have changed, even in the short space of time since Slot was appointed. It would seem that this relates primarily to the tactical direction of a league where results have increasingly been determined by set-pieces and the ability to bypass the press, a development which Slot — and Liverpool — were slow to react to in any positive way.
By the same logic, it might be wise to look at which teams competed in the Champions League final and assess how each of those clubs are being run. While Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal have embraced manager-led operations, Liverpool went the other way and as it stands, appear keen to continue on a similar path with Andoni Iraola.
The Basque has done excellently at Rayo Vallecano and Bournemouth but moving to Liverpool would be like progressing from Sunday school to the Vatican. At Rayo, he earned promotion through the play-offs and then at Bournemouth, he led the club into Europe for the first time in its history but the awkward fact remains that his only trophy in football management was the Cypriot Super Cup with AEK Larnaca in 2018.
Andoni Iraola leaves Bournemouth on a high (Matthew Lewis/Getty Images)
Mike Tyson’s saying about everyone having a plan until they get punched in the mouth can be applied to football. On the face of it, Iraola’s style of football would harness the best instincts of Liverpool’s match-going fans and get Anfield going again because it tends to be front-footed. Having spent most of his playing career at Athletic Club, he knows about the demands of a big and very unique club from a region, which is not unlike Merseyside in terms of the way it feels about itself.
Yet expectations around communication are different for a player and a coach, even within the same club. At Liverpool, you have to be a tough so-and-so to survive a routine which holds enormous civic responsibilities, as Klopp has testified since leaving the role. If I were an owner who gets to decide what happens next — and if he were interested in returning — I’d be doing everything in my power to convince him back.
