It was something Mohamed Salah said about Arne Slot in the euphoria of Sunday afternoon which summoned reminders of another Liverpool manager who won the title in his first season at the helm. The one who, in many ways, is the club's forgotten man.
Salah was describing how, despite his very unflinching Dutch directness, Slot had been willing to hear him out when he suggested he be allowed to 'rest defensively' on the field and not track back, enabling him to offer more offensive energy at the top of the pitch.
'I said I can gamble and somehow I can make a difference,' Salah said. Slot was receptive and flexible enough to try this out. A title flowed from it. Salah clearly loves him for that.
Players didn't generally suggest such things to coaches in the era of Joe Fagan, who stepped away from the Liverpool managerial seat 40 years ago next month - though he, more than the more celebrated Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley, would have probably displayed the same curiosity as Slot. Like Slot, he had Liverpool in the running for a treble in the spring of his first season. His side won all three trophies.
His tenure was only two seasons - he was 62 before rising to the position - yet the challenges Fagan faced at the beginning of the 1983-84 season led many to conclude Manchester United were about to dethrone them.
Liverpool missed out on signing Charlie Nicholas, Michael Laudrup and their chief executive Peter Robinson admitted the squad was 'dangerously small'.
Some players arrived for that season doubting themselves - including Alan Hansen, who had experienced the worst dip in form he had known at the end of Paisley's last campaign. Hansen subsequently found Fagan praising him 'almost every time that I did something well - even for things that would previously have been taken for granted'. The storm passed.
That human touch contributed to Graeme Souness' assessment that Fagan was the best coach he worked for. He has never forgotten Fagan sitting with him on the team bus to Southampton in March 1984, consoling him, after a lunch stop during which the midfielder learned his mother had died.
Which is not to say he lacked a brutal streak. After Michael Robinson arrived in 1983, he asked how the club wanted him to play.
'Listen, lad,' Fagan replied. 'We play 11 players here - just to make sure we aren't disadvantaged. In midfield, when we get the ball we try to kick it to someone in the same colour as us. As a forward, kick it in the net, and if you can't, kick it to somebody who can.'
Fagan's relentless pursuit of competitive advantage convinced him the metal supports Robinson wore in his boots, to deal with foot problems, should be taken out. Robinson began scoring again.
Fagan had a greater fascination with tactics than Paisley or Shankly, trialling a 4-3-3 system in his first league match in charge, at Wolves, to resolve Craig Johnston's positional difficulties.
By late November he had reverted to 4-4-2, concerned by the strain being put on Souness, Sammy Lee and Steve Nicol in midfield. A three-man defence was also trialled but quickly dispensed with.
The diaries he kept are lasting testimony to his concerns in that first season, when a victorious succession after the Paisley era was far from inevitable. These included Kenny Dalglish's loss of competitive edge, Johnston's general truculence and a 4-0 loss at Coventry which led Fagan to throw teacups around the dressing room. He led Liverpool to a treble of the First Division title, League Cup and European Cup.
In the Netherlands, national commentators were reflecting on Monday on the qualities of Slot, the first Dutch manager to win the English league title. 'His work reminds me of writer David Winner's portrayal of the neurotic genius of Dutch football,' says Patrick van IJzendoorn of de Volkskrant. 'In the end he is a teacher, like Louis van Gaal and Sarina Wiegman.'
Souness describes time with Fagan and Ronnie Moran, another part of the legendary Boot Room, as the equivalent of an 'Oxbridge education', citing Fagan's response to his rare positional error which allowed Nottingham Forest to score the goal that eliminated Liverpool from the European Cup in 1978.
'Joe quietly pulled me aside and said, "You know what you did wrong, don't you?",' Souness says. 'I replied, "No?" So, he went through it with me. It was a rollicking without being a rollicking. He had a way of delivering those.'
On the sun-dappled Anfield pitch with the title clinched on Sunday, Salah said of Slot: 'He is quite tough, but he made our lives easier.' It might have been Joe Fagan's epitaph.
my-blood-is-red
2
We're liverpool
Kristofa1
2
Best coach so far