I’ll raise my hand and say that I was wrong. Never thought they were sacking him after the first 24-48 hours post-Brentford went without any announcement and the rumors continued to link him to adding Etienne Reijnen to the coaching staff.
This was the correct decision by the club. But what makes me wonder about the timing of this is whether they learned that Enrique was open to coming here. They’ve known about Iraola’s availability for weeks now, so that couldn’t have been the trigger for them to sack Slot. In any event, I’ll save that for the next manager thread.
All I’ll say now is thank you to Arne for helping lead us to a title and for his classy response and leadership after the Jota tragedy. His place in our history is secure. Best wishes to him going forward.
The best and most logical reason I’ve heard is that it is about maintaining standard and decorum. We gave him the season, we gave him a post-season review and then we made the decision to part ways. It shows a way of doing things and indicates to prospective managers that they’ll get a fair shake.
Let’s be fair most clubs would have fired him several times this year. Not doing so shows we have an institutional belief in there being a “right way” to do things.
I know there were some supporters calling Slot out as early as the PSG game(s) last season.
However, I do support some of the points @Mascot is referring to.
Playing a season without no real RB, no real CB cover, Konate’s/Macca/Salahs form dropping off a cliff. Jota’s passing away, Slot losing his assistant, a high turnover of players.
I am not making excuses for Slot, he failed to find answers to these problems, take accountability or inspire and as a result he lost the Fans, and the final nail was he lost the dressing room.
I feel his Tenure should be respected and I personally feel it is unfair that people are calling him out as a fraud, etc.
I think they were stung into action by the somewhat belated realization that if they dithered any further, Fat Sam would be the best they could get. Longing eyes and come hither looks have an expiration date for everyone if not acted on. Perhaps the suits expected a whole long line of acceptable candidates putting off other jobs to wait for us and that was palpably not the case.
I like to think, with no evidence whatsoever, that someone, somewhere gave somebody a flea in their ear that they’ll not soon forget.
Sometimes there is also a case that you’ve emotionally accepted a specific decision has to be made but wait for “the process” to play out before officially pulling the trigger. That would align with @Sweeting’s point. It’s also true that a lot of planning can happen in that intervening period so we may be closer to a replacement than we appear to be
I’m not so sure. Iraola announced he was leaving Bournemouth quite a while ago and has been looked at by lots of clubs, including the likes of Man Utd and Chelsea, and had numerous jobs offers but turned everything down until suddenly the Liverpool job opens up and he’s apparently already set to be announced.
Hughes hired Iraola at Bournemouth. I think they were talking behind the scenes and we were waiting to perform the formalities of the end-of-season review (which I think we did, as I said above, to maintain a kind of institutional standard). The fawning, almost over-the-top statement about how much we love Slot and how sad we are to part ways does nothing for me except play into the idea that we decided to move on months ago but wanted to maintain our own standards of respecting the coach.
I do agree with Jabu, probably 6 months late, but I understand giving him time, but there was no improvement and no recognisable playing style defensively or offensively!
I think Iraola looks the prime candidate, yes untested at this level, but seems to have the right style for us.
People talk about an experienced coach, who are they and where are they and do they have the credentials to manage in the toughest league.
No matter how experienced someone is, success in the Premier League isn’t guaranteed.
It doesn’t matter, under UK employment Law you can be sacked without any reason or discipline process. It can only be challenged if there is discrimination.
However, it obviously doesn’t apply to Football so who knows.