Arne Slot delivers his VERDICT on the season so far

There is no doubting that Liverpool couldn’t have started this season much better.

Top of the league after six games, beaten Milan away in the Champions League and through to the fourth round of the League Cup. Luis Diaz has five goals, Mo Salah is doing Mo Salah things, Trent Alexander-Arnold is in midseason form and a whole host of other players have taken huge steps up.

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Don't get ahead of yourselves

But new manager Arne Slot knows that getting ahead of yourself can be a death sentence. Speaking after the game, the Dutchman said:

"Everybody is realistic enough, all the players have so much experience that they understand six games into the season doesn’t give you a realistic view of the league table. That is more like 19 games when you can really feel 'okay, where are we?'”.

Slot continued, "Everybody understands if we’d have lost four or five of these opening fixtures then life would be a bit different than it is now. I don’t think it’s necessary for me to convince the players [of] the challenges we still face."

And these are sentiments that the manager echoed in an interview with Sky Sports. On whether getting the result against Wolves yesterday was the thing that mattered, he answered, “In the short term yes but in the long term you also need to look at the performance as well”. 

“I am the first to understand that the first six fixtures we have had have been much [less] difficult than, for example, the fixtures Wolves had… We still have a lot to prove if we’re gonna come across the top sides of the table, if you say it like this. So a lot to improve but it’s good that we have these points and that we are where we are at the moment.”

And he, of course, has a point. Five of Liverpool’s first six league opponents sit in the bottom half of the table at the time of writing - including two of the bottom three - and their only top-half opponent, a Nottingham Forest side that beat them 1-0 at Anfield, currently sit 9th.

You can only beat the team in front of you, obviously. Liverpool shouldn’t underplay their start to the season just because they’ve been beating teams in poor form. But it does place credence on the upcoming fixtures against Chelsea, Arsenal and Aston Villa. If Liverpool are serious title contenders in Slot’s first season, not only will they beat these teams but they’ll look the part doing it in a way that they very much didn’t at Molineux yesterday.

“I always try to be realistic,” Slot answered later in the Sky Sports interview, “Jurgen’s work has been incredible over here, everybody knows this and everybody underlines this, but two years ago was the last time they played Champions League and I think they ended up [5th] last season. It was a season you could almost say without playing Europe because every time during the week the players that played in the weekend got some rest. Now we have to prove, similar season like two years ago… the same players, that we can do well in the Champions League and in the Premier League and that’s something we still, in my opinion, have to prove with almost the same players as two years ago where the result was not what the Liverpool supporters would have loved to see.”

Liverpool welcome Italian Serie A side Bologna to Anfield on Wednesday night for their first home European game of the season.

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