Ex-Liverpool star baffled by 3 Arne Slot decisions vs Tottenham — 'Help me understand'

Liverpool plumbed new depths with a hapless draw against struggling Spurs, and Arne Slot's decision-making has come under fire from a former Champions League finalist

Arne Slot's decisions in Liverpool's 1-1 draw with Spurs have been questioned(Image: Carl Recine/Getty Images)

Jermaine Pennant has every right to have a bee in his bonnet about managerial decision-making. He remains the only Englishman to have played in a Champions League final without ever getting a call-up for the national team.

Most recently, the player-turned-pundit has turned his attentions to Arne Slot's selection decisions. Pennant believes that mistakes were made both with the initial line-up to face Tottenham and then with the in-game adjustments made by the manager.

Some of the previous criticism of Slot has focused on his reluctance to change style and personnel. In that respect, it was an unusually exciting teamsheet, with Rio Ngumoha given his first Premier League start, and the pace of Jeremie Frimpong employed down the right.

Few could argue with the Ngumoha call. The 17-year-old was the one positive on an otherwise dire day, and there will now be strong calls for him to start again versus Galatasaray.

In fact, one of Pennant's three gripes is that Slot chose to withdraw Ngumoha early while leaving Cody Gakpo on the pitch. The teenager made way for Hugo Ekitike with 25 minutes to play, having been a constant threat down the left flank.

Pennant wrote on X: "Someone please help me, help me understand, help me understand why 1 ekitike doesn’t start, 2 takes Rio off leave gakpo on, and 3 takes frimpong off and then leaves Szoboszlai at RB…"

There is certainly a wider Gakpo vs. Ngumoha conversation to be had (and it will come to the fore on Wednesday), but criticism of this particular switch may be wide of the mark. Slot has been managing the young star very carefully, and relying on him to see out the result with a full 90 minutes in his very first league start may not have been the wisest move.

The way that Ngumoha has been built up to this moment actually deserves credit. Hopefully, it will stand him in better stead to make a long-term impact on the team, starting with Galatasaray in midweek.

Rio Ngumoha shone against Tottenham, but Arne Slot took him off midway through the second half(Image: Michael Regan/Getty Images)

On another day, there's little doubt that Ekitike could have found the net from the bench and settled the contest; he spurned a couple of opportunities to do just that. But Pennant's next question is why the striker was not in the lineup from the start.

This one is fairly simply answered. Ekitike was only fit to start from the bench, having trained for the first time the day before the match.

You could perhaps argue that if he was deemed fit enough to play a part, then Slot should have rolled the dice. Maybe on some level, he was guilty of thinking he could get past Spurs without the help of his only in-form goalscorer.

But injuries happen, and Slot should have been able to trust his forward line to deliver in Ekitike's absence, especially against such a makeshift Tottenham defense. So we can move on to Pennant's third question, which might well be the most pertinent of the three.

The former Liverpool star questioned why Frimpong was withdrawn in the second half, with Dominik Szoboszlai left at right-back. And it's probably fair to suggest that this was something of a turning point.

Jeremie Frimpong was taken off against Spurs, and Slot's resulting reshuffle proved ill-advised(Image: Carl Recine/Getty Images)

With all due respect to Frimpong, the issue was not so much with his withdrawal, although his pace down the right had been giving Liverpool a welcome new dimension. The problem was the bizarre reluctance to put Szoboszlai in his natural position, even with right-backs available.

Szoboszlai thrived at right-back out of necessity earlier in the campaign, but it was odd to see him starting there while Frimpong operated on the right wing. As the Liverpool midfield began to flag, shifting Frimpong back into defense would have seemed an obvious move, freeing the Hungarian to inject some energy into the core of the team.

Instead, introducing Curtis Jones for Florian Wirtz seemed to make things even more open. And when the Spurs equalizer came, there was a sense of inevitability.

Admittedly, Liverpool would probably have had a better season if Slot could have cloned Szoboszlai ten times and used him everywhere. But he failed to recognize against Tottenham that the greatest need was in midfield.

Breaking down Pennant's criticisms does show how not everything can be laid at Slot's door. But frustration with the manager is understandably building, and he looks as though he has no answers at present; unless he can turn things around in a big way, it's increasingly hard to see a world where the majority of fans are happy to see him stay beyond the end of the campaign.