Two or three months after his time as Liverpool manager who visited a friend from the Netherlands, Arne Slot noted that there were no clear references to him in the club shop in Anfield.
However, it was still possible to buy books about his predecessor Jurgen Klopp.
“I haven't won anything yet,” concluded Slot. “Why would they celebrate me?”
Now that the final round of Slot's debut season is here in England, the chance of him is and he will be assessed by many on what is happening now. A Premier League title stands for the Liverpool manager as an open goal. When he falls on his face over the last nine games that will become his story.
But the truth is that lock has already won. He has already passed. The big questions at the beginning of the season were not about winning the Premier League – no person predicted that – but whether he could fill the huge Anfield – Leegte was left that Kloppin instead of falling in it.
So yes, that has already proven that. Slot's Liverpool is 12 points free from Arsenal, who only lost once in the competition. Recent disappointments in the Champions League and Carabao Cup have been deeply felt and the team of Slot looked flat.
But that should not detract from the sequence of the fact that after eight and half a year Klopp represented the biggest challenge for an incoming manager in England since David Moyes Sir Alex Ferguson replaced in 2013. The 46-year-old Dutchman treated it with all the simultaneity of a boke who runs his dog in Stanley Park.
Nobody gave him a chance last August. Gary Lineker said it would be 'impossible' for the end to win the competition.
Gary Neville suggested that Liverpool can 'tank' and predicted a fifth placed finish with which Roy Keane agreed.
Jamie Carragher went for third place, while Alan Shearer admitted that a title would be a 'big question'. Me? I gave Liverpool for third place and thought it was generous.
Slot then runs ahead. He is all ahead of us and those who know him are not surprised from a distance.
“Arne is in the first place a coach and the only thing he would never do was to change this into a personality struggle with Jurgen Klopp,” says someone who knows him well.
“There were no profit there. So he arrived in Liverpool and left all the photos on the wall and all the memories exactly where they should be. But he looked at the team and knew he could improve it. That's what he does. That is his obsession. '
Comparisons with Moyes – and indeed Unai Emery's replacement of Arsene Wener in Arsenal in 2018 – are only partially valid. When Ferguson and Wenger stepped from their clubs, they took most of the magic.
“Emery drowned in the vacuum caused by no observable structure,” reveals a source, while high club officials acknowledge the obstacles that they should have been smart enough to go from the path of their new manager. “We have failed David,” it is known that former vice-chairman Ed Woodward said.
Similarly, Moyes could not get good players to play for him at Old Trafford. He brought small changes that found to a certain extent because of change and a number of title winners moaned about them. They just pushed back because he was not their husband.
Slot has found that a way and that is probably his biggest early performance. He was recruited from Feyenoord for, among other things, his record of improving players. Data -driven, the analysis, criticism and training of football players of the Liverpool Manger, is always placed on a platform of irrefutable statistical evidence.
“He can be brutal to players,” says an Anfield -Bron. “He's not a shoulder. He only really unloaded once and that was during the rest of the recent Southampton game. He really gave it to them that day.
“But normally he will sit and talk about what he wants and then he will show why he wants it. Statistics, data, clips. Impossible to prevent. That's how he gets their buy-in. '
Changes in players such as Ibrahima Konate – perhaps the most improved football player at a 'Big Six' Club – Dominik Szoboszlai and even Mohamed Salah have been irrefutable this season. Within Anfield, although it is not in popular faith that the defense of Trent Alexander-Arnold has also improved under lock.
And this collective growth – Liverpool is on pace to end this season with 92 points – was all delivered without the one player Slot thought he needed last summer, a holder.
Liverpool thought that the Spaniard Martin Zubimendi would be okay until the real Sociedad player did not. Manchester City may have lost their Fulcrum Rodri early in the season and suffered when their title defense fell apart. Well, Slot and Liverpool have never even met theirs.
Slot is aware of what has recently been said about his team. He knows about the story of what people think can happen if he loses Alexander-Arnold, Salah and Virgil van Dijk this summer. He reads things written at home and abroad.
For example, when the former Dutch international Wim Kieft in the Netherlands wrote the day before the defeat of the Carabao Cup that suggests that Slot might not be a 'magician', the manager of Liverpool saw it and raised an eyebrow.
Because he is not and was never. Although the instructors of the Dutch FA (KNVB) coaching course always suspected that the young lock knew more than she, it was never about magic or stardust for him. Exactly opposite.
“If Jurgen was a Messiah figure, Arne is the Technocrat,” adds another well-placed source. “For him it's not about the cult of personality. He was not interested in replacing Jurgen's personality because nobody could. But he knew he could replace him as a coach and build and improve on what he had left him. '
At the end of May last year when Liverpool confirmed the appointment of Slot, the world screamed for the new man's words and he got nothing exactly. Instead, Slot went on vacation with his family. It was a deliberate tactic that corresponded by the manager and his new club and was partially driven by a desire to increase the impact when he finally sat down to talk.
When the day came in mid -June, he was graceful about Klopp. Indeed, in his opening interview with LFCTV, he referred to his predecessor more than 20 times and it was difficult not to worry about him then.
How can this relatively non -announced coach from the Netherlands hope to replace one of the most iconic managers of the Premier League?
And maybe that is its beauty. Perhaps it was the trick that Slot never tried and it seamlessly did it. Whatever happens between now and the end of the season, the scale of that performance does not change.
Don't talk out, Sean
Sean Dyche's biggest lawyer is his real career in management.
According to every sensible statistics, he has been successful.
In the course of 14 years in Watford, Burnley and Everton, the results of Dyche spoke for him.
By rings so publicly against a perception this week that has always been unfair, he only gives credibility to what really should not be a debate.
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