'I would say': Slot publicly claims £50m Liverpool player was 'not at his standards' under Klopp last season
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Liverpool have been better than expected this season after seeing Jurgen Klopp exit the club over the summer.
The Reds could count on the security of Klopp’s world-class leadership for almost nine years.
The German’s tenure was one of the most outstanding periods in Liverpool history and is going to be incredibly difficult to replicate for Arne Slot.
Nevertheless, although Klopp’s shoes are impossible to fill, Slot is his own man. The 46-year-old has also inherited a stellar Liverpool squad from his predecessor.
Whatever the players at your disposal, though, you still have to get them to gel together and buy into your ideas and Slot has done that impressively so far.
In fact, several of the Reds team look better than ever under the new Liverpool head coach, with Luis Diaz the perfect example of this. And Slot took a look at Diaz’s form in his pre-Wolves press conference on Friday.
Arne Slot surprised by low-scoring Luis Diaz
Although he’s been at the club for almost three years now, it has felt a bit like Diaz has never really been able to get going at Liverpool.
A brilliant opening six months was followed by an injury-hit season and while 2023/24 was better, Diaz had all sorts of things to contend with off the pitch, with his form suffering on it.
All of that appears to be behind him now, though. The Colombian has come out swinging under Slot, scoring five goals in the opening five Premier League games.
Diaz now needs only three more goals to match his tally in the league for the whole of last season.
And when asked at his press conference about what has changed with his No.7, Slot was actually surprised to hear that Diaz is scoring far more than in previous campaigns.
READ MORE: Arne Slot has decided whether Luis Diaz or Cody Gakpo will start against Wolves
“He always had this quality and I wasn’t even that aware of the fact that, how many goals did he score last season?” Slot asked the gathered reporters. “
“Eight?! Okay, for me he was someone who could score a goal, and eight for his quality is not at his standards I would say. Did he play a lot, did he play every game?”
Diaz actually played 37 out of 38 games in the league last year, leading to Slot visibly trying to find the answer to his low-scoring.
“Okay, maybe he just comes back to his normal situation,” said the Dutchman. “Maybe he was a bit unlucky last season but a player of his quality will always score a lot of goals in every season.”
How many can Luis Diaz score?
Diaz really should have scored more than eight Premier League goals last season. The 27-year-old had plenty of opportunities to improve on that.
But in actuality, despite what Slot says, Diaz has never been an especially prolific player.
The one outlier in his career is the 2021/22 season, where he joined Liverpool from Porto midway through. Remarkably, Lucho scored 14 goals in 18 leagues games for the Portuguese side that season.
He then got four in 13 for the rest of the season, making it 17 in 31 over the course of the campaign.
In his other two seasons at Porto, though, Diaz scored six goals in each. For Liverpool he has four, four and eight. That has needed improving, but expectations should be tempered a little. If Diaz can get in the 12-15 mark, that will be a big step forward.
