But the fact that they continued looking for a set piece coach and only “officially” gave him the role at the end of the summer after failing to find someone suggest misgivings from the start?
Why I might ask? This sounds like a basic hiring mistake by Hughes. Also, as Liverpool FC… how could you fail to be an attractiveness enough option for candidates?
I’m thinking in regards to coaching staff, the loss of Heitinga (who would have known a lot about set pieces as a CB) was probably hugely impactful.
He spoke several times towards the end of the season of how we likely paid a price in the spring for him having used too small a core of players and that to avoid the same thing happening this year he would need to make more use of his squad. Yet Harvey and Quansah to name the two most relevant were still told they needed to leave if they wanted to play. So you may not have heard him give that exact quote, but the message was very clear - we had too few players he felt comfortable using and we needed to address that if we wanted to avoid another spring crash out.
If that were the strategy it was executed very poorly. Think we focussed on quality players at the expense of any sort of depth. Still 14 or 15 players or less who can be relied on.
We might not know the ins and outs but ultimately we were looking for a set-piece coach… a position that was becoming increasingly important and we failed to attract a dedicated candidate for the position and ultimately decided on someone who comes from an analysis background. That was perhaps a risk worth taking after considering all options but I don’t believe this was a Slot decision. Afterall, this and many other coaching appointments had no previous connection to Slot and ultimately the job responsibility is Hughes.
But it begs the questions:
how did we fail to recruit a dedicated, specialist set-piece coach?
how was the decision made to appoint a non-specialist and is there something wrong with the recruitment process that now needs a tweak? Not concerned about the mistake (everyone can make them) but the response which brings us to…
why is there still not a dedicated, specialist set-piece coach lined up to replace Briggs? VVD and Slot have pretty much gone public about the urgent need to improve this aspect… does Hughes see the urgency?
We can only attempt to fill in the gaps with what we think we know - all of which has been discussed above, but think useful to put here (based on my reading of things)
We tried and the right candidate was not forthcoming - we saw the LinkedIn adds
Likely it was poor from a recruitment strategy perspective in the sense they seemingly struggled to attract the right candidate for the job - that falls with the clubs recruitment strategy - which is probably geared up towards bringing in operational staff more so than football people. Did they leave it too late to decide they needed a specialist, did a deal fall through late and ruin the plans…who knows.
Depends on how snap the decision to let Briggs go has been. Maybe they have a deal in place for next summer and intended to get by with Briggs, and now decided they can’t. Maybe it’s all sixes and sevens. Probably something in the middle. I’d not imagine we get anyone in in terms of coaches before the end of the season.
I honestly have to question how this goes onto Hughes. When Buvac left, there was no gnashing of the teeth at Edwards, for example. Seems to be a recent fad that came about with a few comments about the summers recruitment. Slot didn’t get his players without an inkling then and neither did this Briggs chap get moved around and ultimately the chop without his input either.
We dont have any details of the hiring process at all and it’s jumping to massive conclusions to conclude something went wrong. A post framing it in such negative language as that is certainly not based on credible reporting.
No one goes to school to be a set piece specialist. Briggs was as much as a specialist at this shit as anyone else having already been responsible for it last year. The fact his previous roles were in analysis is irrelevant. That is also what Reijnen’s primary role was and wasnt even what Briggs was hired to do in the first place. That’s just football coaching - a bunch of made up roles filled by football people who put their hand up to take responsibility for something when the need arises
What we know is we felt were a person short in the coaching set up and started a formal search for a full time set piece coach. What we ended up doing was filling that role internally with the guy who was already doing those responsibilities, and pivoting our hiring to the role he would be vacating to take this new role. This is a completely normal set of events when hiring, especially when people are doing largely made up roles with artificial boundaries on their responsibilities like exists for football coaches.
Reading up on TIA it looks like Etienne Reijnen was meant to be in that position but we couldn’t get a work permit for him. So basically a Brexit bonus, although you would have expected someone in legal to have picked up that was an issue.
Yep - he didn’t have the required coaching qualifications to get the work permit/visa and stayed on as assistant coach at Feynoord where he still works. But that was Summer 2024…long time since then to sort it.
It’s interesting how quickly it has shifted to everything being interpreted through the prism of assumed incompetence. Reijnen was one of the team Slot identified that he wanted to bring with him from Holland and was told it would be unlikely because of the work permit issues.
All I really want from a set piece coach is that they can teach our lads to head it away and they don’t hop about like a lunatic on the touchline every time we get a corner, like that prick at Arsenal.
football isnt so sophisticated that a ‘set piece coach’ is someone who has studied the art of set pieces in tertiary education and has worked his (or hers) way up through the clubs by improving set pieces from divvy 4 onwards…theres no grass roots role for that job.
hes a firstly a football coach/trainer, who is tasked with working on set peices…
i understand how its a position, but i think we are overestimating the game if we think its a career in itself.
Slot and Virgil can have a whinge about it all tey like, but really, if its not working, they ultimately have more control over the situation than a bit part coach…
take the penalty Virgil gave up a few weeks back, or even the goal we conceded Vs Wolves…no one could ever convince me its on a specialist coach who may get ‘x’ amount of access to the playing squad, to rectify those very basic mistakes.