When Liverpool’s players rise from their south London hotel beds roughly four hours before their Premier League fixture at Crystal Palace tomorrow, preparation will begin in earnest.
Since Arne Slot’s arrival as head coach in the summer, a process called “body wake-up” has formed an important part of the players’ routine. Slot and his backroom team have introduced breathing exercises ahead of matches as well as training sessions, while ice baths have been encouraged post-exercise.
“We don’t leave any stone unturned,” Andrew Robertson told reporters after last weekend’s narrow victory at Wolverhampton Wanderers. “The staff have been really good at making us prepared for every single game, making sure we are as fresh as possible.”
A set routine has not emerged because of the variety of kick-off times that Liverpool have faced, but the idea is to get the players lightly moving their muscles as early as possible.
One constant has been players sleeping in their own beds ahead of home games — a departure from Jurgen Klopp’s way of doing things, when it was customary for Liverpool’s squad to stay at a hotel in the city.
Given he led the club to a record 68 consecutive league matches unbeaten at Anfield between 2017 and 2021, it was hardly a case of the old methodology not working. But Slot believes the players are more likely to get a better night’s rest on a mattress they are familiar with.
Arne Slot likes his players to have a settled pre-match routine (Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
Ahead of the 3-0 victory over Manchester United at the end of August, Liverpool’s players, many of whom live nearby in Cheshire, remained in their houses rather than bunkered in a hotel closer to Old Trafford.
For Anfield fixtures the players still spend lots of time together, using a hotel for eating and resting. For evening kick-offs, they usually assemble around lunchtime.
Slot’s methods appear to be working. Liverpool are top of the Premier League, having won five of their six matches, while also winning twice in the Champions League as well as the Carabao Cup. His start is better than any other manager in the club’s history.
Yet the standard of the opposition domestically becomes better as October progresses. At Selhurst Park, he faces his second 12.30pm kick off of the season. Though victory was secured at Ipswich Town on the opening day, Palace is a first because it comes after excursions in the Champions League. It was the sort of dynamic Klopp often complained about and sometimes laboured with.
So how else will Slot and his staff endeavour to avoid any repeat struggles this season — and what else goes into his preparations for matchday?
In Slot’s office at the AXA training centre in Kirkby, a number of television screens are fixed to the wall so he can assess tactics and set pieces.
The next room belongs to the coaches and that space is linked to a presentation suite, where Slot regularly holds meetings with members of his squad, both collectively and individually. Though there are a lot of them, they are usually short, with Slot trying to keep messages simple.
Players are becoming familiar with Slot’s calm yet direct demeanour, explaining to them exactly where they are doing well and where they can improve. Yet rather than just tell players what he wants, he likes to be able to show them, which means he has worked closely with the club’s video analysts.
Daniel Spearritt is the post-match and elite player development analyst and part of his job involves clipping moments from games as they happen, allowing Slot to see replays before he speaks to the media after the final whistle. Slot thinks this helps him talk with more authority about any incident.
Over the last week, the analysts have helped inform Slot’s decisions around match preparation with key principles from their findings featuring in meetings with players.
Against Wolves and Bologna, for example, Liverpool’s corners were mainly in-swinging because the analysts, working closely with new set piece coach Aaron Briggs, thought they invited a greater possibility of scoring.
At San Siro in the Champions League, where Liverpool beat AC Milan 3-1, Ibrahima Konate and Virgil van Dijk scored from set pieces after it was decided to attack the six-yard box.
Virgil van Dijk scores from a set piece in Milan (Marco Luzzani/Getty Images)
Spearritt, Joel Bonner and Jansen Moreno were inside the stadium that night, while opposition analyst James French had also done a lot of the prep work before the trip to Italy.
In the opening game of the season against Ipswich, Slot’s decision to ask his full-backs Robertson and Trent Alexander-Arnold to defend narrower and deeper came from conversations with the analysts.
Though Ryan Gravenberch has since stood out under Slot because of his capacity to dribble long distances, in some games the opponents’ strategy has made that more difficult. Slot often speaks about “duels”, and against Bologna it was decided that Liverpool should defend man-to-man, meaning it was more difficult, in theory, for a player like Gravenberch to break free and do what he does best.
Yet, as midfield partner Alexis Mac Allister revealed in a press conference before that game: “We try to have a structure and know where our team-mates are going to be, but we have freedom as well.”
Slot explained he wanted his players to “feel the structure”, stressing that although he expects them to follow his ideas without the ball, it is a different matter in possession.
“When we don’t have the ball there’s no room for freedom, it’s just hard work and doing what we have to do,” he said. “But when we have the ball, especially in the last third of the pitch, then we also rely on the individual quality. We bring them as much as we can in certain positions, which comes from structure, but then it also has a lot to do with the individual quality of the players.”
Slot is hands on in training sessions (John Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
Slot was unhappy with the last 15 minutes of Liverpool’s performance at Wolves, where “we lost the ball so many times in promising positions, or moments that could lead to promising positions”.
On Monday morning there was another meeting where, according to Van Dijk, the discussion revolved around “how to manage the game much better, how not to let opponents come back into the game”.
“We have a lot of meetings,” he added, speaking to reporters after the Bologna win. “A lot of video meetings, so you get exactly shown what he wants from us, what we do well and what we don’t do well.”
While Slot has exuded calm for most of his Anfield tenure to date, there are occasional flashes of temper.
“At times he (Slot) can raise his voice when it’s needed,” Van Dijk said. “It is not like he shouts with nothing to back it up. He can show us immediately, ‘Look at this, what are you doing there? You should have done this’. That is a good thing.”
After Wolves, Slot kept his appraisal short — as he has done after every match at Liverpool so far. The players had Sunday off, while Slot reflected on what had gone wrong at Molineux despite gaining another three points.
“I don’t lose my temper that much,” Slot said ahead of Bologna. “And I don’t think it’s a good idea to lose your temper every single day because then players at a certain moment feel like, ‘Yeah, there he is again screaming at us’. That doesn’t work, I think it’s better to show them the actual things they do.”
When Liverpool were considering possible candidates to replace Klopp, Slot emerged at the top in the data model in all three major areas: playing style, improving players and injury prevention. These findings were something of a surprise, given that the model is weighted against the Dutch Eredivisie, where the standard isn’t as high as some other major European leagues.
Whereas Klopp’s opposition focus was mainly on the collective threat, Slot asks for information about individuals. From there, he will enter the presentation suite armed with information, sometimes using a white board to illustrate the strengths of an opponent that feels requires negating as well as the weaknesses he wants to see exposed.
Slot’s assistants Sipke Hulshoff and John Heitinga tend to be more involved in individual or small group meetings. For example, the responsibilities on Liverpool’s defenders have changed under Slot and this has led to discussions with all four of them at the same time.
Slot with his trusted assistant Sipke Hulshoff (Nick Potts/PA Images via Getty Images)
After training sessions are finished, Slot watches them back to establish what could have been done better. Though Slot is an obsessive and training days are now longer, they are often less intense than they were under Klopp, reducing the risk of injury, and more time is now spent in the gym on individual programmes set out by the performance and medical team.
It is now compulsory for the players to have breakfast together at Kirkby. An average day begins at 9.45am with a wellness check where the players enter information into an app that records the quality of their sleep. Prior to the start of training two hours later, sessions can involve yoga and hydrotherapy.
Training usually lasts for an hour and a half and players are on their way home by 3pm. The day before a game, Slot will hold a slightly longer meeting and at this point it becomes clear what team he has selected.
Ahead of the Bologna game, the Liverpool squad was photographed chasing after tennis balls placed on cones before racing through a gate. While this involved the sort of short, sharp sprinting that Slot expects during games, he likes one-v-one drills because he thinks they add to a layer of competition between the players, especially on a matchday as the mood becomes more serious and the focus sharpens.
Slot’s methods are not necessarily revolutionary, but they are finely honed. Sterner tests are still to come, but for now they are serving him well.
Additional reporting: Andy Jones
(Top photo: Getty Images; design: Meech Robinson)
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