The wrong move: Arne Slot opens door he wants firmly closed

Arne Slot has opened a door to discussion that he should want closed. This was the wrong move.

Another poor performance from Liverpool on Sunday has cranked up the heat on Arne Slot. The Reds were awful as they got themselves just one point at home to Tottenham Hotspur.

A terrible result, all things considered, made even worse by the terrible display. Liverpool didn’t deserve to beat their opponents, despite Spurs’ horrendous recent form.

And that naturally brings pressure. It was on the back of another terrible display away at Galatasaray and there’s a sense that things just aren’t going to change. We’d argue that Slot himself has made that clear, too, with comments after the Spurs draw.

"Usually in the Premier League you see a lot of teams outperform their xG, but we haven’t,” said Slot, per the Athletic. "We have not been clinical enough, throughout the whole season. It is not about the quality of the players. We have unbelievable attackers that in their careers were able to score a lot of goals.

“We also struggle to keep clean sheets. We haven’t had as many as you would want if you want to go higher up in the table. That is a bad combination to pick up as many points as we want.”

The wrong door to open

Slot has made it clear there that Liverpool are not functioning well. That's different to luck or poor form - the basis of the team does not work.

Why might a team not outperform their xG? It could be bad luck but it's rare over a 38-game season. More likely is that Liverpool's xG doesn't tell the entire season.

There's a way to 'game' the system there, after all. Take a large amount of long shots and you'll get a high xG through quantity, rather than quality.

But those aren't shots you'd expect elite players to outperform xG on. The best finishers will do better than average on decent chances. That isn't the case on long shots, where the truly elite still aren't consistent.

And clean sheets? Well, again, that's down to performance. Liverpool are too open and too easy to play against - that will cost you in the long run as teams will find ways to score.

So Slot's absolutely correct but this naturally reflects terribly on the person coaching the team.

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