IT WON’T BE EASY

LIVERPOOL coach Arne Slot admits it will be tough for his manne to retain their Premier League title this season. 

The Reds kick off the new season at Anfield at 9pm on Friday against visitors Bournemouth, who finished the last campaign in ninth place. 

Boosted by the additions of Florian Wirtz, Hugo Ekitike, Milos Kerkez and Jeremie Frimpong, the Reds also signed 18-year-old defender Giovanni Leoni from Italian club Parma on Thursday for a fee of £26 million (R620m). 

Slot’s span also lost some star players in Diogo Jota, Trent Alexander-Arnold (Real Madrid), Luis Diaz (Bayern Munich) and Darwin Nunez (Al Hilal), so it will be a new-look Reds. 

The coach knows they will need some time to gel and said ahead of hosting Bournemouth: “The reason why that is so difficult [to retain the title] lies mainly in the fact that there’s so many competitors that can also win the league over here. 

“To win it once is already very special, let alone if you can win it twice in three, four or five years, or as we did, twice in five years and [Manchester] City did even better than us in the last few years. 

“So that’s unbelievable if you’re able to do this in this league. And probably this year is going to be harder than every year before, because every team brings in new players, but our main competitors definitely did as well.” 

Slot underlined the high standards expected at Liverpool, but stressed there can be no excuses when the team takes the field on Friday.