The transition from Jurgen Klopp to Arne Slot couldn’t have been much smoother, and it was helped by the outgoing manager’s willingness to ensure his successor succeeded.
Klopp could have left Liverpool with an ageing squad and lack of confidence in 2023. However, he decided to stay another year, developing his new players and eventually leaving the Reds in a place from which they could kick on.
Journalist James Pearce has written extensively in his new book, Walk On: Inside Arne Slot’s Liverpool, about how the German helped the transition to a new boss and how Slot set about to win the Reds’ 20th top-flight title.
Sam Millne spoke to James Pearce to learn about the book, Walk On: Inside Arne Slot‘s Liverpool, and get some behind-the-scenes knowledge of Liverpool’s 2024/25 Premier League-winning campaign.
At what point in the season did you start to plan the book?
I’d say probably around December time, January when I started to think, ‘Yeah, this is gonna happen (we’re going to win the league)’.
Then it was probably the back of January, early February when Harper North, the publisher, reached out to me and said would you be interested?
And I must admit I took a fair few weeks to think about it because life’s quite hectic enough as it is and I thought, ‘Am I going to be able to give the time to it to potentially do it justice?’
I’d been asked to do books previously and just thought the timeframe was going to be impossible with juggling the demands of the day job.
This time around, because it was quite clear early on that Liverpool barring a remarkable chain of events were going to win it, plus the fact I had until August to submit it, it was probably late February, early March when I bit the bullet and said, ‘Let’s do it’, because I thought if I didn’t do it, I’d probably always regret it.
Can you give us an idea of what to expect?
When I agreed to do it, I told the publisher that I didn’t want it to be a diary of the season. I didn’t want it to be chronological.
What fascinated me and the motivation behind doing it was: how on earth do you cope without such an iconic leader (Jurgen Klopp)?
That was what really interested me, how the club handled the transition and essentially that is kind of the gist of the book, how they went from Klopp to Slot.
The transition from Jurgen Klopp to Arne Slot
The second chapter is the lengths that FSG went to get Michael Edwards back and then trying to explain the importance of Edwards; the job he’d done previously as sporting director; what is it about him that literally FSG were like, ‘Plan A, plan B and plan C is just get Michael Edwards back’?
They didn’t take no for an answer and in the end Mike Gordon essentially offered him his own job, running the football operations for FSG.
That kind of leads into why was Michael Edwards so dead set on Richard Hughes and why he believed that Richard Hughes was tailor-made to be the new sporting director.
There’s a lot of detail about the other candidates they considered, why they went for Slot in the end.
Klopp helped with the handover in terms of inviting Michael Edwards around to his house in Formby and basically giving him a detailed rundown on every single player in the squad and the strengths, the weaknesses, what he felt needed to happen going forward.
What piqued your interest to write the book?
I didn’t want it to be too game-focused. And of course, there’s references to big wins along the way and significant moments, but it’s more the detail and the anecdotes and detail around the games.
Also, tactical things that players had told me about things that Slot had done to change the flow of games.
Are there any exclusive nuggets from the book you can share?
I think there’s a fair bit in there I’d like to think that hasn’t seen the light of day elsewhere.
I spoke to people who said to me that they first picked up on the idea that he was struggling and feeling the weight and the strain of the job just before Christmas in 2022.
They said that was around the time that Liverpool were in Dubai for that training camp that if you remember was kind of the same time as the Qatar World Cup.
They said that he just seemed rundown and isolated a bit and I think that was where it kind of started.
How Diogo Jota’s death impacted the book
When I was in the process of writing it, of course you’re absolutely rocked by that news about Diogo Jota.
And that changed the book because I suddenly thought that although it happened at the start of pre-season before another season, it was still going to be synonymous with that title-winning season because he was such a part of it.
So that kind of changed the structure of it a bit, and in the end the last chapter is devoted entirely to Diogo Jota and how Liverpool dealt with such an unimaginable tragedy.
Thanks again to James Pearce for his time. You can find his new book, Walk On: Inside Arne Slot‘s Liverpool, here.
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