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Arne Slot has responded to Wayne Rooney’s claim that the Liverpool head coach does not have the “aura” to manage the club by pointing to his Premier League title success last season.

Rooney questioned Slot’s suitability for the job, telling The Overlap: “I have met him a few times. He was a nice fella but I just don’t think, for Liverpool, he’s got that aura about him. Maybe this is because you have just come off the back of Jürgen Klopp and it’s going to be difficult for anyone to have that, but I just don’t think there’s that aura about him.”

The former Manchester United striker said it was “strange” for Slot to be in an apparent “audition” to keep his job so soon after winning the league but believes failure to qualify for the Champions League would lead to the Dutchman’s sacking.

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Johan Lange, the Tottenham sporting director, has explained the rationale behind Igor Tudor’s hire as head coach until the end of the season. Lange said: “it’s very important to go into a shorter process than you do if you are changing a head coach over the summer. We interviewed a few candidates. Igor impressed us very, very much in the interview.

“He comes in with very big experience at the highest level in football. As a player, playing for a very, very big club, one of the biggest clubs in the world in Juve. Of course he was part of this very good generation of Croatia national team in the late 90s. He has shown the capabilities of coming into clubs around this time, February, March, and also big clubs, and made an immediate performance impact. That was of course a very big reason.”

Lange said the next, full-time appointment will be made with playing style at the forefront of executives’ thoughts. “We are very ambitious to create a team that can play dominant football and that can control the matches with the ball for a few reasons. If you look across almost every league in the world, that is how you can say the top teams normally are successful – that is being able to dominate possession, create chances, be aggressive without the balll

“We are also a club with a rich history of having some of the best offensive players in the world and having a very particular style of play that resonates with the history, resonates with the fans and I think that, combined with having a possession-dominant, aggressive style of play, those two things go hand in hand. That is something that is important for us here at the club.”

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