Steven Gerrard told TNT Sports that Arne Slot is “I think he is under pressure, for sure,” and that “I think there is a large section of the Liverpool fans that are very frustrated. I think some have had enough.” Gerrard accepted the uncomfortable reality around the manager while agreeing with reporting that the club\u2019s hierarchy are not preparing an immediate change.<\/p>\n
The season\u2019s trajectory explains the mood. After the first Merseyside derby of the campaign, a 2\u20131 win that marked Liverpool\u2019s fifth successive league victory to start the defence of their Premier League crown, results have collapsed. The Reds have taken 21 points from the subsequent 18 top-flight games; Everton can lay claim to 26. Over a span representing almost half a league season, Liverpool have the 12th-best record in the division.<\/p>\n
The problems are visible in several areas. Liverpool have conceded three goals on five separate occasions, have nearly lost their most legendary player of the modern era from the club, and were beaten by a Manchester United team led by Ruben Amorim. Amid that run a clear replacement candidate is already noted in the background; Xabi Alonso has been linked previously.<\/p>\n
Gerrard argued that the pressure on Slot is primarily external and that the club\u2019s senior figures will provide backing because of recent success. “I think they would want to give the manager, on the back of last season, and any manager for that point, as much support, and they would want to be extremely strong for Arne Slot during this tough time, try and give him the opportunity to get the team out of it and fix the issues that they have got,” he said.<\/p>\n
On the relationship between Slot and the sporting leadership Gerrard added: “I think also, knowing [sporting director] Richard Hughes a little bit and [CEO of football] Michael Edwards a bit more, they would want to be strong and rally around the manager,” and: “They are not really a club that makes a lot of changes, so I think the pressure\u2019s more external than internal.” The Athletic summed the position: “The pressure is real but he\u2019s not on the brink.”<\/p>\n
Key statistics from the period include non-penalty expected goals for 34.8 (5th), non-penalty expected goals against 24.2 (3rd), set-piece goals for 5 (joint 17th) and set-piece goals against 14 (19th).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gerrard: Slot is ‘under pressure’ but Liverpool hierarchy back him despite a damaging run. this term<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6325,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,172],"tags":[1162,299,1087],"class_list":["post-6326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-epl","tag-analytics","tag-arne-slot","tag-coaching-change"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}