Liverpool exits may be blessing in disguise for Arne Slot replacing Jürgen Klopp

Arne Slot will certainly be grateful for all the change at Liverpool this summer. After all, the departure of Jürgen Klopp has paved the way for him to land one of the biggest posts in football.

But the seismic nature of the shift at Anfield might be considered a little disconcerting. Klopp is set to be followed out of the door by a small army of coaching staff , leaving key positions at Liverpool empty.

Certain staff will always tend to follow managers, but the scale of the Klopp exodus is unusual. Assistant manager Pep Lijnders and goalkeeping coach John Achterberg both pre-date the German at Liverpool, yet have nonetheless decided that now is the time to move on.

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The fear is that there is a 'brain drain' effect. After all, Klopp came to rely on Lijnders more than anyone else, even though he inherited rather than appointed the Dutch coach. By contrast, at this rate, Slot will come in to an almost empty building on his first day.

At the same time, in the circumstances, perhaps this is a blessing in disguise. Slot already has a daunting enough task trying to replace Klopp; dropping him into the exact same backroom structure and asking him to emulate what the German has achieved would be setting him up to fail.

Slot has been chosen in part for his tactical similarities to Klopp, and Liverpool will not be going right back to the drawing board. But with the club having effectively cleaned house, the new head coach will not be unduly bound by old ideas, and will have more of an opportunity to put his own stamp on things.

Had he been working with all of the same staff, there's a sense that Slot would have been tasked with essentially keeping the ship on its current course, the one plotted by Klopp. Instead, though he won't need to rip up the map, he can more easily make his own adjustments — and won't be viewed as some kind of inferior Klopp-lite.

He will also be at the helm with a number of his existing staff. That's the other obvious benefit — while Liverpool will still need to agree compensation packages, the clear-out at Anfield makes it far easier to parachute in Slot's chosen Feyenoord aides.

Per This is Anfield , Slot will bring assistant Sipke Hulsoff, head of performance Ruben Peeters, and technical advisor Etienne Reijnen with him from Feyenoord. Transplanting wholesale the structure in which he has succeeded in the Eredivisie can only increase his chances of doing well at Liverpool.

Meanwhile, though the coaching structure is getting a thorough refresh, that comes in the context of a backroom structure that has been set up to weather any number of managerial changes. Michael Edwards is technically also a new hire, but Liverpool is very familiar with his successful methods, and he and sporting director Richard Hughes will be able to help Slot when it comes to providing him with quality players.

On the whole, then, it looks like about the right balance of continuity and change. There's no denying that all of the departures are daunting, but that's as much of an opportunity as a challenge for Slot — and as head coach rather than manager, he will not navigate this exciting new Liverpool era alone.