A tale of two clubs' identities

The Premier League opening weekend illustrated the contrast between Chelsea's chaos and Liverpool's conservation.

As first impressions are wielded and takeaways opined from the opening weekend of Premier League action, for two clubs at the higher end of expectations, it was a tale of two very different identities being forged.

Liverpool come into the new season with a new man in charge, Arne Slot, who got off to winning ways in a tricky away fixture against Ipswich. It had all the hallmarks of a pitfall start for the Dutchman – away at a promoted side, early 12.30pm kick-off, a new side looking to make a huge first impression in its first top flight game in over 20 years. In the end, Liverpool just about maneuvered its way through the lasers and successfully didn’t set off any alarms, albeit the first 45 minutes of action were far from exciting viewing.

After a turgid early showing, Liverpool changed tack and Slot’s adjustments seemed to trigger a more Jurgen Klopp-like approach to the play, moving through the progressions faster and pushing up higher onto the Ipswich defence, which until then had had a fairly comfortably early afternoon.

Eventually, the deadlock broke and Slot could breath a sigh of relief, as Liverpool coasted to a 2-nil victory and looked far improved in the second half. The performance wouldn’t have gone without a little bit of concern for Slot however. Although he did have the Jurgen Klopp approach to fall back on, his own way of playing, which is intended to be a more possession-based approach with a slower, more methodical style of build-up play, struggled against an Ipswich side that was full to the brim of running and pressing. For them, it propped up early signs that they may turn out okay having been tipped for an immediate return to the second tier next season.

For Slot and Liverpool, the attention will turn back to the transfer activity, or lack thereof, and how the club have chosen not to bolster the squad ahead of the new season. Jarrell Quansah was the first to feel the Slot wrath as he was unceremoniously hauled off at half-time for Ibrahima Konate, whilst in the background Liverpool’s next choice defender, Joe Gomez, sat at home fielding calls from his management team as they looked to engineer a move away from Anfield.

If Liverpool do intend on selling Gomez, they’ll undoubtedly have to add a fresh face into the squad to cover the versatile role he offers across the back four. With Quansah, who granted is only 21 and entering only his second full season in the senior line-up, already giving the manager food for thought, it’d be worrisome for Liverpool not to add a quality addition to compete for places alongside the formidable Virgil van Dijk, who he himself has an open-ended future with his contract expiring at the end of the season.

Altogether, it has been an odd start to life post-Klopp. Slot seems up for the challenge, doesn’t mince his words and beams a supremely confident personality without the overbearing force of personality Klopp often inhibited. But if the new structure can’t find ways to help him in the transfer market while a handful of first team players get linked with moves away, there’ll be an awful lot of pressure on the new manager to “do a Klopp” and extract everything from his existing and sometimes dangerously thin squad.

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On the other side, Chelsea’s season went off as expected – a 2-nil defeat against champions Manchester City, as Enzo Maresca tried and struggled to cohesively piece together his jigsaw of 40-odd senior players. The narrative heading into the game took a predictable turn when Raheem Sterling, or rather, his “camp”, released a statement just minutes before kick-off stating they will be seeking reassurance from the club about his role having been left out of the squad entirely.

The thing is, it was utterly unsurprising that such an action was taken by one of the players. The fact it was Sterling, one of the more senior members of the squad and a player who has left a bit to be desired in the past couple of seasons, added to the discourse that we were hearing directly from a senior English player that all is not right. It would take a substantial lack of self-awareness from Sterling not to see his position was on rocky territory with all the attacking incomings, the latest of which being Pedro Neto from Wolves.

Neto, five years Sterling’s junior, was excellent in the earlier part of last season before getting injured, but showed a lot of the quick-twitch pace and scoring ability Sterling had done in his early career. Sterling, now 29, feels as if he’s coming to the end of his career having been on the road for over 10 years. If Chelsea intend to force Sterling out of the club they’ll have a bit of a job on as he commands a reported £350,000 a week, a salary no major club would touch with a barge pole. Unless a huge chunk of that can be sanded off or he can find a loan move elsewhere, and with so many other options in the squad to appease, Sterling’s future at the club looks totally untenable.

Another storyline Chelsea crafted for themselves was captaining Enzo Fernandez in lieu of the suspended Reece James and departing Ben Chilwell and Conor Gallagher. The fact Fernandez warranted the armband after a racism incident in the summer which had his own teammates calling out was utterly bizarre, added to the fact that the Argentine has nowhere near justified his excess of €100million price-tag just yet.

What’s more worrying for Chelsea is the club’s wheeling and dealing under Todd Boehly has swiftly alienated a lot of its fans who scratch their heads at what the club are trying to achieve and the chaos it has created, as well as giving rival fans a stick to beat them with as they continue to amass young players like Pokemon, signing them up to huge contracts with no idea or plan of how it all connects together.

Moving on from Mauricio Pochettino to Enzo Maresca, a Championship-level manager last season, leaves everything in an extremely precarious position. If wins don’t start to come quickly and regularly he will have the unenviable task of trying to manage the morale of over 40 very highly-paid professional footballers, all of whom will be expecting to play, while Boehly prepares a draft of an email confirming his sacking.