If it seems that Arne Slot is picking on Trent Alexander-Arnold in the Liverpool dressing room, it is not because of a problem between them. Quite the opposite, actually.
Because the right-back had an unusual request. He wanted his manager to criticise him, sometimes in front of his teammates. He asked him to mention every time a forward beat him and to brand it unacceptable. It is a punishing approach designed to make him better. He feels that Slot, with his attention to detail and track record of improving players, can help.
There is an understandable focus on their relationship. Alexander-Arnold represented one of the great triumphs of Jurgen Klopp’s management: first his decision not to buy a rightback because he knew of a teenage talent in the ranks, then as an extraordinary creator who reshaped Liverpool’s tactics as the full-backs attacked more than the midfield, and finally as the vice-captain who inverted into midfield.
It did not escape attention that Slot substituted AlexanderArnold in each of his first three games or that the 25-year-old was unhappy to be taken off against Brentford. It is a cause of some concern that Alexander-Arnold is in the last year of his contract at Anfield. Yet if mentions of his future can involve talk of a free transfer next summer, Alexander-Arnold voiced his own ambition: to become the toughest defender to encounter in Europe.
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