For Arne Slot, Pep Guardiola is still the best manager in the world. The Catalan coach is currently in the corner with Manchester City where the blows are falling, but Slot is convinced that this weekend’s opponent will quickly get out of there.
‘The reason Guardiola is one of the best managers in the world – and for me even the best in the world – is that he always comes up with solutions. He now has to find a solution for Rodri’s absence, but he will certainly come up with a solution. But hopefully that will be after Sunday,” Slot winked.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if Pep comes up with the next brilliant idea,” Slot continued his eulogy for his colleague. ‘He started with inverted full-backs and then came up with the centre-backs as number 6. So I wouldn’t be surprised if he comes up with something new to make his team stronger. That’s why he inspires so many people. When he did such experiments, everyone thought he was crazy. But now everyone has tried it and it turned out to be brilliant.’
Liverpool impresses: ‘It’s like watching an operation’
Manchester City appears to be quite vulnerable without Rodri, just like Arsenal clearly missed Martin Ødegaard. Yet Liverpool has also had its fair share of injuries. Why is there so little talk about this? ‘Usually people only talk about injuries if the results are not good. But our results are good and the replacements for the injured players are doing well. But Alisson Becker, Diogo Jota and Trent Alexander-Arnold have certainly had an impact in previous seasons. So it’s only right that we don’t talk about them much.”
Ibrahima Konaté and Conor Bradley did not come out of the battle against Real Madrid without armpits, but Slot could not say a day after the victory in the billion-dollar ball whether the duo can be used in the Premier League cracker. Alexander-Arnold is available again for the Dutch coach, who is looking forward to the meeting. ‘When you play against your competitors, it is always important. No matter how many points we or they have. These duels are always close and that makes it important.’
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