Liverpool’s new head coach spoke to the media in his first press conference.
Arne Slot has insisted that his Liverpool formation will not be rigid – and scotched suggestions he favours a 4-2-3-1 system.
The Dutchman takes over the in the Anfield hot seat from Jurgen Klopp as he held his first press conference on Friday morning. A chief reason why Slot was prised from Feyenoord – where he won the Eredivisie title and KNVB Cup in three years – to succeed Klopp was because of his playing style.
It has been widely thought among Kopites that Slot has favoured playing a 4-2-3-1 formation, which is a slight tweak from Klopp’s tried-and-trusted 4-3-3 which yielded seven major trophies including the Champions League and Premier League.
But Slot has stressed that he will not favour either and will let his players express themselves in different ways during his time in charge of Liverpool.
The Reds head coach said: “I’m a bit sad. That’s maybe not the right word, but I was hoping if people looked at my team they would not say it is 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 or whatever formation you want to call it, I was hoping they would say: ‘OK, there’s a lot of freedom when they have the ball to take it into different positions. So, sometimes it’s a 4-2-3-1, sometimes it’s a 4-1-4-1, sometimes we do build-up with three. So there’s a lot of freedom when we have the ball.
But if we don’t have the ball, then there’s not so much freedom, then we want to be really aggressive and there is only one way and that is everybody mostly keeps his position. I wouldn’t put myself in a situation where I say I prefer 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 or 4-1-4-1. There’s a lot of players taking in a lot of different positions so if you would have asked me, I would say we played 4-3-3 instead of 4-2-3-1 at Feyenoord.
“But we did build-up a lot of times with three, full-backs had different roles. I’m curious who told you we played 4-2-3-1! Maybe that one should go to get his licence or analyse a bit better!”
