How will Arne Slot approach two games in a week?

Judging by the Dutchman's time at Feyenoord, he is going to have to acquire a new taste for rotation at Liverpool.

Photo: IMAGO | Anfield Index

Few Liverpool fans would have dared dream that Arne Slot would make as good a start to his time in charge of the club as this.

Replacing a legendary figure like Jurgen Klopp is hard enough, but the difficulty is ramped up when you kick things off with a pre-season heavily disrupted by international tournaments.

As such, the Dutchman was expected to face a few teething problems during his first few weeks at the helm at the very least.

Instead, Slot has not only overseen three victories from three games, he has done so without his team conceding a single goal. 

And most encouragingly of all, Ipswich, Brentford and Manchester United were all put to the sword in entirely different but entirely convincing ways.

Still, it is important to note that the first three weeks of Slot’s reign are not entirely reflective of the job he has taken on given they featured just three fixtures.

The real challenge of managing a club of this size is that deep runs in multiple competitions are considered the bare minimum each season.

To that end, the upcoming schedule, which features seven games in just 21 days, will give us a far better idea of how well-equipped the new head coach is for the task. 

It is hard to know exactly how Slot will approach this run given he generally did not manage under the same conditions during his time at Feyenoord.

But the best indicator arguably comes from the 2021-22 campaign, when the Dutch giants made it all the way to the inaugural final of the Europa Conference League.

Feyenoord played 19 European fixtures that season, and it is the line-ups selected by Slot whenever an Eredivisie game directly followed that are most instructive.

Perhaps surprisingly, across the 15 games that came after a Conference League outing, he made a total of just 21 changes to his starting XI. 

That is an average of 1.4 alterations per game, and comes down to just one when you ignore a group-stage dead rubber against Maccabi Haifa that saw an unusual amount of rotation (seven changes). 

Incredibly, this high workload being placed on a small group of players did not seem to have a negative effect in terms of results, with Feyenoord winning nine, drawing three and losing three of their 15 fixtures after European duty - form broadly in line with their league record that season.

These results allowed the Rotterdam club to pair a deep European run with a third-placed Eredivisie finish in Slot’s first season in charge.

However, the truth is that far more will be demanded at Anfield. 

In England, Slot will be forced to contend with four additional Premier League games played at a trademark physical intensity, as well as an extra cup competition in the League Cup. 

So, even accounting for Ruben Peeters’ impressive record at Feyenoord and Liverpool’s determination to improve player availability this season, the upcoming schedule surely cannot be navigated without heavy rotation.

That will mean the Dutchman making full use of the incredible squad at his disposal, with the likes of Harvey Elliott, Darwin Nunez, Cody Gakpo and Jarell Quansah in line for greater involvement after a quiet start to the campaign.

But ensuring results and performances remain steady while changing personnel from game to game is the true test of the attritional fixture list that awaits.

Should Slot succeed on that front, then any lingering doubts about his suitability for the role are sure to have evaporated by the time the next international break comes around.