The business end of a season isn’t always the point to parade your principles. Arne Slot has attacking ideals, but a fondness for winning can override idealism. “Sometimes as a manager you have to be pragmatic as well and understand it is maybe not our game in terms of football, [so] then we as a coaching staff have to be ready to make decisions that help the team in those moments,” he rationalised. He was talking, in particular, about the moment he brought on Wataru Endo for Luis Diaz to help Liverpool see out victory over Wolves.
Slot isn’t as wedded to a system as some of his peers but he has tended to have at least three specialist forwards on the pitch. Until, for the last 25 minutes on Sunday, as Endo slotted into the midfield, Dominik Szoboszlai manned the left flank. The Hungarian’s formidable running power was used, Slot said, to “neutralise”.
