Arne Slot already has motivation for Liverpool next season after what Richard Keys said
Arne Slot has shocked many with just how well he has adapted to life at Liverpool since his arrival in the summer.
Liverpool sit 15 points clear at the top of the Premier League table and the title looks to be a case of if, not when, with just one loss in the league this season.
Furthermore, the Reds have a Carabao Cup final on Sunday (16 March) after the second leg of their round of 16 Champions League tie against PSG, which they lead 1-0 on Tuesday (11 March).
Richard Keys makes Liverpool admission
Liverpool look unstoppable this season and even when they haven’t been performing at their best levels, they’ve still been able to do enough to come away with all three points.
Slot’s side found themselves 1-0 down against bottom of the league Southampton at half-time on Saturday (8 March) but stepped it up in the second half and came away 3-1 winners.
After Arsenal drew with Manchester United on Sunday, it leaves Liverpool needing 16 more points to win the league.
Nevertheless, Richard Keys questioned in his blog how much of Liverpool’s success this term is down to their quality, as he said: “There simply isn’t a challenge. There hasn’t been a genuine challenger to Arne Slot’s team all season. That’s why I’ve said – time and again – I don’t know how good this Liverpool side is.
“Look. They’re top and deserve to be so. They’ve won it because they’ve been better than the rest. But there hasn’t really been a ‘rest’. There hasn’t been a test.
“It’s the lack of a challenge to Liverpool in the league I can’t fathom. Why is that? They’ve all gone backwards – including Arsenal. I happen to think if Arteta’s side had simply been as good as they were last season they’d have won the title. But they haven’t been.”
Keys is not the only person to have posed these questions either. Both Gary Lineker and Gary Neville have suggested that Arsenal’s injuries have allowed Liverpool an easy route to the title.
Slot has Liverpool motivation ready
There’s no denying that Arsenal have struggled this season due to injuries, but the implication that Liverpool haven’t had big names missing too isn’t quite fair.
The Reds can only beat what’s in front of them each week and they have done so on 21 of 29 occasions this term, losing just one game along the way.
| Played | Goal difference | Points | |
| Liverpool | 29 | 42 | 70 |
| Arsenal | 28 | 55 | 55 |
Therefore, while you can say that they haven’t had as much competition facing them as other teams may have, Liverpool doing all they can each week and producing quality results deserves more credit.
Until their draw against the Red Devils, those in North London were still up for the title race ahead, so it’s not as if the league has been out of sight for too long.
Slot has a big summer ahead of him with players like Virgil van Dijk, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Mohamed Salah all out of contract.
However, it seems as though the Reds will go into next season with almost no pressure to replicate this year’s success and instead, to compete with other sides.
With that in mind, Slot can certainly use that to fuel his determination to go and tally up even more points and show that this season wasn’t a fluke that relied on any misfortune elsewhere.