Jurgen Klopp is all Trent Alexander-Arnold has known at Liverpool, and having a new manager at the club will be “strange,” but the vice-captain is warming up to the prospect of “a new challenge.”
The man who gave Liverpool’s No. 66 his breakout and guided him every step of his journey thus far will depart at the end of the campaign, turning all we’ve known for the last nine years on its head.
It is a big summer of change for the club and Alexander-Arnold, who is still very much working out his emotions over having someone new call the shots at Anfield.
Speaking with Gary Neville on The Overlap, the 25-year-old conceded it will be “weird” to go into pre-season with some unknowns, but equally is starting to like the prospect of something new.
“I’d probably say I’m sat on the fence with regards to my feelings on a new manager coming in,” Alexader-Arnold said.
“It’ll be a completely different situation and it’s going to be weird to then turn up to pre-season, having to adopt a new playing style.
“Whereas now, without anything getting said to me, I know all the manager wants me to play, and I turn up to pre-season, I know to jump there, I’m to press there, but for this summer, my next pre-season will have a completely different message.
“It’s going to be strange, but I think I like the idea of a new challenge for the team, the players and the club.”
Sporting manager Ruben Amorim is currently considered one of the leading contenders but there is still some time yet before Liverpool confirm who will take over the reins from Klopp.
Irrespective of who that may be, Alexander-Arnold knows half the battle is ensuring the mentality at the club remains the same – do that and the team will remain in the conversation for honours.
He added: “The new manager is going to come in and change the way we play, and it’ll be a different culture and different messages.
“But as long as the mentality to win, the eagerness to win and the internal pressure within ourselves and the demand to win things and be in a title race next season, no matter who the manager is, then we’ll be fine.
“That’s what we expect from ourselves, of course, the results might not go our way, but if the mentality is there, and the dressing room has the desire that we’re going to win, we’re trying to win things as well.”
As for words on the manager who helped catapult his career, Alexander-Arnold said: “Jurgen Klopp has been nothing but incredible. I owe everything to him as a player.”
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