“Maybe he’s the only one…” – Arne Slot gives measured response to jibe from Wayne Rooney

Arne Slot has responded to a recent jibe from Wayne Rooney that the Liverpool head coach lacks the ‘aura’ of his predecessor Jurgen Klopp.

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The 47-year-old initially made light of the Herculean task of succeeding the legendary German at Anfield by emphatically winning the Premier League in his first season in charge, but he’s found the going significant tougher this time around with the Reds currently languishing in sixth.

There has even been speculation over the Dutchman’s job security, with Fabrizio Romano suggesting this week that the former Feyenoord boss could be at risk of receiving his P45 should we fail to qualify for the Champions League next term.

Slot responds to ‘aura’ jibes from Rooney

A few days ago, Rooney said on The Overlap that while it seems ‘strange’ for Slot to be in an apparent ‘audition’ to keep his job, he claimed that the Liverpool head coach doesn’t have the requisite ‘aura’ for the Merseyside giants, particularly as the immediate successor to the charismatic Klopp.

The 47-year-old has since responded to the ex-Manchester United striker’s comments by saying (via The Guardian): “We are all different. The only thing we have in common, Jurgen and me, is that we both won the league – and that’s not too bad, is it? I think the more a manager wins, the more aura he has.

“I don’t know if you agree with Wayne Rooney, by the way, but if this would be the general opinion then I think people would probably tell you last season I had more aura than this season.

“Maybe he’s the only one who has this opinion. I don’t know; you tell me. It’s the first time that I heard this but I think it’s fair to say that Jurgen definitely has an aura. I can talk about him, not about myself. He definitely had that, but a winning manager has an aura as well.”

Slot doesn’t have to be Klopp 2.0 to be a success at Liverpool

For all the justified criticism that Slot has taken this season about Liverpool’s poor results, style of play and some questionable team selections, one thing he can’t be accused of is blatantly trying to be a carbon copy of Klopp in terms of personality.

The German was such a force of nature in L4 as to be virtually inimitable, and his successor has rightly sought to go about the job in his own way, something which brought him immediate success but hasn’t had nearly the same effect in the current campaign.

The 47-year-old isn’t the first man at Anfield to publicly respond to a critical observation from Rooney in recent months – after the ex-England striker questioned the leadership qualities of Virgil van Dijk, the Reds captain dismissed those comments as ‘lazy criticism‘.

As Slot justifiably pointed out, the ‘aura’ and reputation of a manager/head coach is heavily dependent on the trophies that they win and the results on the pitch week by week. Those who’ve been queuing up with brickbats for the Dutchman this season were singing a rather different tune 12 months ago.

He doesn’t have to be Klopp 2.0 in order to be regarded as a success at Liverpool. He simply needs to oversee a marked improvement between now and May to get us into the Champions League and win a trophy, and then seek to re-establish domestic dominance in the subsequent campaign.

You can watch Slot’s full pre-Nottingham Forest press conference below, via Empire of the Kop on YouTube:

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