Emery doing brilliant job at Villa, won't change style - Slot - video Dailymotion

Liverpool boss Arne Slot on the job Unai Emery has done at Aston Villa and his expectations for the game Melwood, Liverpool, UK

Transcript

00:00After Leverkusen, you mentioned that managers seem to come to Anfield

00:03and change their game plan a lot.

00:05Thinking about Aston Villa, they've got such depth in their squad,

00:08not only in personnel, but in terms of style,

00:10when you think about the difference between maybe a John McGinn

00:13or a Leon Bailey in the right wing,

00:15or even Edry Contra in the right-back or Edry Contra in the centre-back.

00:18With the team with so many options, but also in a bit of a bad moment at the moment,

00:23how hard is it to try and game-plan for all the different permutations?

00:27If you ask me now, I would say it's not that difficult,

00:30because Unai Emery has played in a similar style for years now at Aston Villa.

00:36It's almost always the same formation,

00:42but it sometimes depends on the player,

00:45that you can have different characteristics.

00:47But his style of play, his idea about football has always been the same.

00:53And I think Unai's saying this, that also was the situation with Xabi Alonso,

00:59who we studied for I don't know how many games,

01:02but never once he came up with the idea of playing Boniface as a left winger

01:06and playing without a number 9, that he hasn't done at all before we played them.

01:11But that's maybe also a compliment.

01:13Most managers feel that we have a very good team,

01:19so they think they have to change their game plan,

01:21not their playing style, but their game plan a bit.

01:24If you ask me now, do you expect Unai to change a lot,

01:29I would not expect that, because he never did this,

01:33not if he played City and also not when he played Liverpool in the past few years.

01:39But in terms of personnel he can change a bit, like you just said,

01:43he has a different option in the full-back and in the wings,

01:46but it's always been a 4-4-2 that he's been playing for many years now.