Arne Slot has admitted he is not surprised that none of Sky Sports’ pundits predicted Liverpool would win the Premier League title before the season.
Champions Manchester City and its recent competitors Arsenal were most people’s favorites before a ball was kicked in August, with Liverpool’s title bidding falling short last year under Jurgen Klopp, while the season prior it finished 32 points off the summit.
With a summer of change, few foresaw an improvement on the 2023/24 campaign – but, remarkably, the Reds are likely to wrap up the title before the end of April. A win or draw o n Sunday against Tottenham Hotspur would stretch Liverpool’s gap at the top of the table to 15 points and guarantee that the title is heading to Anfield.
Even Arne Slot admitted in the past that the expectation was to finish back in the Champions League places, a feat Klopp achieved in his final season following a campaign in the Europa League.
That none of the 40 pundits asked put Liverpool top of their predicted table didn’t surprise Slot. “Not a lot, which is normal because it was mainly about Arsenal and City,” the Liverpool boss replied when asked to guess how many ex-professionals thought Liverpool would finish first.
“Arsenal added a few players in the summer; City lost [Julian] Alvarez, but I think everybody expected them to have the same season they have had for many years in a row. Maybe some of them that liked Liverpool a lot, maybe Jamie [Carragher], would predict something nice for us but maybe not a lot.
(Image: CBS Sports Golazo)
When he was told the answer was zero during an interview with Sky, Slot responded: “But I think it’s quite a normal prediction. I’ve said many times during the season that this team still had a lot to prove because Jurgen created this team two years ago.
“This team only played Europa League and Premier League. In the Europa League, I don’t think Virgil [van Dijk] played many games. We had to show that we could do Champions League and Premier League with the same group of players, which normally makes it harder. But sometimes it also works that the more games you play the fitter you become, the more of a team you become as well.
“I could understand, apart from me being the new manager instead of Jurgen that there were a lot of question marks because of me and because of us being in the Champions League and the Premier League again, with the season before us only playing Premier League because Europa League games were played with different players and it was already hard to compete with Arsenal and City.”
