Arne Slot and Liverpool will not be impressed by Man City taunt after first official interview

Liverpool head coach Arne Slot was effusive in his praise of Pep Guardiola and his all-conquering Manchester City side but that did not stop the Premier League champions' official account seemingly having a dig at his expense on social media.

The Dutchman has now conducted his maiden interview having been unveiled as the successor to Jurgen Klopp at Anfield, as he spoke of the influences behind his football philosophy. In a wide-ranging conversation, the 45-year-old admitted that he has directly been shaped by the tactical innovations of both Klopp and Guardiola.

The one-time Eredivisie winner will be tasked with attempting to dethrone City from their perch in the coming years, with the Etihad outfit having won the Premier League on six out of the last seven campaigns. Amid the rivalry which has developed between Liverpool and their North West rivals in recent times, it appeared that City are not eager to wish lot a warm welcome.

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Taking to Twitter/X, the official account for the current Premier League champions posted a retrospective clip which showed clips from September 2017. During the week in question, City beat the Reds 5-0, while also defeating Feyenoord twice in the Champions League. - with the latter couple of results coming several years before Slot's appointment at De Kuip.

Whether this was meant as a dig towards the newly-appointed Anfield head coach is up for debate but there was no doubting the respect the boss has for rivals City and his dugout counterpart, Guardiola. In a revealing first interview after being unveiled in his post, Slot spoke highly of the influence the Spanish coach has had on his own approach.

In a tribute to the ex-Barcelona manager and his predecessor Klopp, he said: "The new rivalry in European football came because of Jurgen – he managed Liverpool and Pep Guardiola, of course, managed Manchester City and I think for everyone who loves football it was a fantastic era to watch the both of them getting the best out of each other.

"Yeah, I have seen a lot of games of Liverpool, a lot of games of City as well, and when you live in Europe the Premier League is probably the nicest league to follow. [My style] is the style of many modern coaches at the moment: we were all a bit inspired because of the rivalry between City and Liverpool.

He added: We were all inspired by Guardiola and Klopp and I think at a big club, which I worked in in Feyenoord as well, it is probably the only style you can play – to have the ball a lot, to have a lot of energy, and I think also now there are comparisons between the club I left behind and the club I am going to work for now."

Despite these words of admiration, it is clear that Slot is eager to be his own man when it comes to his philosophy as he vowed to implement his own style at Anfield. He said: "I think it's always interesting if you are the successor of Jürgen Klopp and also Pepijn Lijnders, who does quite a bit of work on the training pitch, to see what their ideas were on the training pitch.

"I said this, we all try to steal a bit from each other – mostly this is done by looking at the games but if you can see the way they train, that can only help you. Let one thing be clear: the players are not going to get all the same exercises again – we will implement our own things. But it's interesting to see what they did also during the week."