The North West derby is always one of the first games fans look for when the Premier League fixtures are released, and this season we got the first clash early as Liverpool travelled to Old Trafford on Sunday.

It was billed to be the first big test for Arne Slot after he won his opening two games in charge of Liverpool, but in the end it turned out to be a straight forward day at the office against his fellow Dutch manager Ten Hag.

Luis Diaz scored a first-half brace for Liverpool, and it felt like the game was already over at that stage with the question being more around can United stop the floodgates from opening. In the end the 3-0 scoreline doesn’t look great for United, but the reality is it could have been much worse.

Salah scored the third goal for Liverpool and he has now scored more goals at Old Trafford than all but three Man Utd players since the start of 2021. It’s a stat that United fans will hate to read but it shows the consistency of Salah and how he has punished United in recent years.

The problem for United was of course in the middle of the park and Slot knew that. Slot purposely kept the game tight when he had to defend and stretched Man Utd open when he had the ball. We could all see what happened after that with Slot playing Gravenberch who knew the tactical side of Ten Hag during both their times at Ajax. 

This game helped us get a better understanding of the two teams, which both wanted to control the tempo of the game, but there was only one winner who had his players set up where every one of them knew what to do. Man Utd on the other hand did not have that right. They banked on Garnacho and Rashford to put Zirkzee in a good position to score, but Alission kept his goal clean. 

Slot is slowly working his way into the team and building relationships with the players, and has benefited from Klopp leaving behind a good group to work with. This could be the answer for Slot because Man Utd are being a lot faster in buying, but look a bit lost, still looking for the calm confidence already when the season has just started. 

There seemed to be a big gap between the two sides and boos could be heard around Old Trafford, with many fans leaving well before the full-time whistle. The big question this year was can Man Utd make up some ground on their rivals after finishing 22 points behind them last season. There is definitely work to do and the next few games will be huge to see if they can get into a winning streak and see some consistency in results.