Arne Slot - Head Coach (Part 1)

[Notasuperfan]

@RedWhippet

I did wonder last season whether Slot’s approach was helping with fitness. I’m now wondering whether last season was just blind luck and this season bad luck.

Klopp had seasons like that as well. He did usually find answers for it.

I would say last season’s conditioning by Slot is perfect for the team who is used to Klopp’s gruelling conditioning.

Physical conditioning takes time to build up and possibly takes time to lose it completely if one continously play. Slot’s approach to the team is a more measured one compared to Klopp’s style. Klopp’s style is very tough on the legs and burns out players really fast if there is no proper rotation. Just look at TAA now.

Slot’s style is slower. Last season, it worked brilliantly. The legs that are accustomed to Klopp’s conditioning is suddenly faced with one that is more gentler in training and match days. This means our team didn’t had that much of an injury crisis at all and players can outgrind the opponent down in a match while pressing the opponent well.

Fast forward to this season. The gentle style of conditioning coupled with a shorter conditioning period allows us reduce the chance of a injury crisis at the start but will have adverse consequences down the road where we cannot switch up the tempo at will and look extremely knackered midway the season . We are seeing it unfold now in our faces.

[mattyhurst]

Yeah I don’t think they will replace him till the season concludes.

Only possible time they do that will be the end of March international break.

[JustHitMyHead]

I’m pretty sure sports science is a little bit more complicated than that but you might have a point.

Although I think conditioning is lost much quicker than that (matter of weeks) so I don’t think it would explain a whole season.

[Zoran]

We have nowhere near enough (or any?) knowledge/data/proof how we did our physical preparation last summer. It is indeed possible that we got some things wrong in that isolated aspect of pre-season, like we had also under Klopp here and there.

[mattyhurst]

I will fess up and say I did say rather hyperbolically that I wasn’t sure about Slot when Bournemouth equalised to a friend and those concerns I feel are probably now oddly more justified. If he gets the end of the season I don’t think he should stay beyond that, his stubborness is my major concern.

[Quicksand]

Wolves won two matches before last night. Two matches in the PL.
So, they are the worst side in the league, routinely beaten by "lesser " teams than Liverpool.

[wyld.at.hrt]

Yeah, the bigging up of the opposition after a bad result is a bit silly. They’re bottome for a reason and we really should be beating them. One off results are a possibility in any league. The thing is, we’ve had 9 league losses this season and fuck knows how many draws. Not just that, we’ve conceded late equalizers and lost late on a shit load of times as well. This is not an isolated or one off result. It’s one that has plagued us the whole season long and one that is perfectly plausible for any given one of our remaining fixtures.

[Bekloppt]

Yeah, the excuses are really wearing thin.

[ILLOK]

Wolves had 19 points from 29 games before last night.

Best of luck to anyone trying to make the argument they’re not a bad side, you have some hard work ahead of you.

[RedArmada]

@Mascot

I think a lot of Liverpool fans are getting frustrated that we’ve become incredibly risk adverse and boring, without fully realising that this is just what the league has become. If anything, we were a bit late to the party on this (or whatever the opposite of a party is).

I barely watch other games besides our own and I can’t speak as to how the rest of the league is, but the frustration doesn’t stem just from becoming boring and risk averse. If it was working, it would have been more palatable, but Slot has turned Liverpool into a team that puts viewers to sleep and is still wide open, cut apart as easily as ever.

It’s obvious that we are not struggling because other teams have adopted a more conservative approach; we are struggling because we can’t get even the basics right.

@ILLOK

Wolves had 19 points from 29 games before last night.

Best of luck to anyone trying to make the argument they’re not a bad side, you have some hard work ahead of you.

That’s wrong. They actually had 13.

[ILLOK]

Thanks for the correction @RedArmada, I was looking at goals scored.

13 points, 20 goals scored and 51 conceded it was. A tough nut to crack!

[Mascot]

@Quicksand

Wolves won two matches before last night. Two matches in the PL.
So, they are the worst side in the league, routinely beaten by "lesser " teams than Liverpool.

@wyld.at.hrt

Yeah, the bigging up of the opposition after a bad result is a bit silly. They’re bottome for a reason and we really should be beating them.

FFS. You (and others) are totally missing my point.

I’m not suggesting it’s too much to expect to beat them or thinking it’s three dropped points isn’t reasonable.

I thought the hysteria after City beat us was fucking ridiculous, but I don’t think there should be any excuses for not beating Wolves.

My point is simply this. Wolves are not shite. No team in this division is incapable of beating you if you don’t turn up. And we did not turn up last night. I don’t think we were poor as such, at least not Forest bad. But I think if you drop off a few percent, or allow a bit of complacency to creep in, don’t take your chances, or just have one or two who are of the pace, you are in big trouble.

I remember Premier Leagues of the past where if you had a team in the bottom five you could make some changes, go through the motions, and see out a comfortable 2-0 win that both teams would be broadly happy with. That not what the league is now.

[wyld.at.hrt]

@Mascot

FFS. You (and others) are totally missing my point.

I’m not suggesting it’s too much to expect to beat them or thinking it’s three dropped points isn’t reasonable.

I thought the hysteria after City beat us was fucking ridiculous, but I don’t think there should be any excuses for not beating Wolves.

My point is simply this. Wolves are not shite. No team in this division is incapable of beating you if you don’t turn up. And we did not turn up last night. I don’t think we were poor as such, at least not Forest bad. But I think if you drop off a few percent, or allow a bit of complacency to creep in, don’t take your chances, or just have one or two who are of the pace, you are in big trouble.

I remember Premier Leagues of the past where if you had a team in the bottom five you could make some changes, go through the motions, and see out a comfortable 2-0 win that both teams would be broadly happy with. That not what the league is now.

You’re missing the point yourself. The Premier League has always been one where 20th can beat 1st. It’s happened before, it will happen again. That is still however an outlier and makes a startlingly low percentage of results. We all remember it happening and interpret that as the norm. It is not. But yes, on any given day it ‘could’ happen.

What’s happening with us though is not the above, and that’s what you’re missing. These sorts of results which are normally outliers are happening with regularity this season. You cannot conflate the two.

[sandsoftime]

To me, LFC with the fair and just owners we have in FSG, will keep Slot in place beyond this season into the next, immaterial of whether this season fizzles out, or we do achieve silverware.

Winning the PL in his first year, will likely give him another opportunity to reset and begin afresh after a full pre-season. World Cup and long summer for the players will not be an ideal scenario for Slot, but it is something all managers need to navigate, and importantly, just get on with it.

From a shit style of play dilemma we are presently having to endure, it can’t, and should not be allowed to continue. This message I think will be worded to Slot at the end of season accountability meeting he urgently needs to attend with FSG.

Once this instruction has been branded to the Slot Psyche, all further excuse for poor performance will be removed from further decision making of retaining his services, which again, in the spirit of fairness, I feel will be adjudged across another full season - so people, we need to buckle up for an uninspiring 26/27 season of games…!
We’ve been there before with other inept managers, looks like we might have to ride it out a bit longer.

What I find curious with Slot, is this…
a) He inherited a good squad of players, each fit as a butchers dog, knew the system and knew their specific role on the pitch, with a strong Jurgen Klopp mentality that went on to win the PL.
b) Cruising to the PL until we met, and unluckily got beat over two-legs by PSG. This was a team fashioned by Luis Enrique in the mirror image of a Jurgen Klopp team and his philosophy… (they literally ran the legs of us did they not). However, PSG were still, and remain, a poor imitation, a shadow in fact, of the best steamrolling LFC teams that Jurgen assembled.
c) It is common knowledge that Slot admired PSG for the way they played against us, and the way they went on to win the CL.
Admired them so much so, that he has intimated he wants us to play in similar style…!!!
In short, under the tutelage of Slot, we have become and aspire to be, a shadow of the team (PSG), who aspire to be, a shadow of the great Jurgen sides… so in theory, we had possession of the original masterpiece when Slot landed, only for it to be ripped up, torn apart to create a pale imitation of an imitation.
No wonder to some fans, we feel we are spiralling down on a weekly, under performing basis, into middle-of-the-table levels…

[Limiescouse]

@wyld.at.hrt

Can anyone see this team looking sharper, fitter and fresher? Genuine question. We are down the line with not a whole lot of line left to go and to me they’re running through treacle most of the time. Actually, scrap that, running through treacle would actually be faster than the pace we play at.

Related to this is that it seems pretty universally agreed from people who have reported on it that the overall training stress has gone way down under Slot. This is not a matter of degree, but an entirely different perspective on whether training should be used to build capacity when the competitive season is already a high demand. There is no right or wrong answer to this, but the risk of this switch was always that you get short term benefits in freshness, but over time fitness falls off. What you’d expect from that situation aligns very closely to what we’ve seen from this side over since the start of 2025.

One argument then is that they’re not doing enough work during the week in training to worry about any losing anything from a day or two off. The other argument though is that we’ve let them fall off to a point that a normal schedule represents too much of a stress that they need extraordinary measures to recover from and rather than excusing the frequency of these trips we should be doing root and branch evaluation of why so many are deemed to be needed.

[rupzzz]

I am still struggling with making my mind up with Slot and whether I want him at the club beyond the end of this season, and I suspect that will continue to be the case until the season closes.

FSG are pretty steady in how they operate, and I can’t therefore see them being rash about the decision and its more likely we start the season with him in charge.

There are so many things that have happened that will be playing a part in this seasons drop off, and the blame can likely be apportioned a few ways.

• To Edwards/Hughes for lack of singings and seemingly being a bit too risk averse (why the fuck isn’t Guehi a LFC player or was another CB not brought in)
• To Slot for poor man management (which can trickle down to his coaching/fitness staff) - he’s also not the club manager like Klopp was, arguably meaning he has less responsibility being the head coach, but that means someone else (Hughes) will be doing bits Jurgen used to do - and potentially doing a poor job of that.
• The players for ultimately playing shit - the tactics being set by Slot might be wrong, but the tactics aren’t for players to misplace passes all the time.

I really want this season to be the transition season for club that its been labelled a few times (but ideally still winning the FA Cup or the CL (imagine!)), and after this season is over and the new one starts, we are all heading in the right direction under Slot…but also accept it’s probably not that easy.

Something will need to change in the summer - signings (outgoing and incoming), a new assistant coach (might be too easy to say Hietinga is missed and GVB isn’t doing a good job), or Slot is off (my heart also wants Alonso to one day be our manager and to be a success).

As is often the case when teams are playing poorly, fans want change, but change has to be done right and that’s the hardest bit.

Arne Slot - please fucking sort this shit out now and end the season strong - then we can worry about what happens next.

[Quicksand]

@Mascot

@Quicksand

Wolves won two matches before last night. Two matches in the PL.
So, they are the worst side in the league, routinely beaten by "lesser " teams than Liverpool.

@wyld.at.hrt

Yeah, the bigging up of the opposition after a bad result is a bit silly. They’re bottome for a reason and we really should be beating them.

FFS. You (and others) are totally missing my point.

I’m not suggesting it’s too much to expect to beat them or thinking it’s three dropped points isn’t reasonable.

I thought the hysteria after City beat us was fucking ridiculous, but I don’t think there should be any excuses for not beating Wolves.

My point is simply this. Wolves are not shite. No team in this division is incapable of beating you if you don’t turn up. And we did not turn up last night. I don’t think we were poor as such, at least not Forest bad. But I think if you drop off a few percent, or allow a bit of complacency to creep in, don’t take your chances, or just have one or two who are of the pace, you are in big trouble.

I remember Premier Leagues of the past where if you had a team in the bottom five you could make some changes, go through the motions, and see out a comfortable 2-0 win that both teams would be broadly happy with. That not what the league is now.

FFS, no need for being aggressive.
I’m not missing your point, I totally disagree with it. The closing of the chasm that you see isn’t actually happening. Wolves will be relegated, and won’t challenge to come back up next season. Because they are a poor , poor side.
We let them play, we were fucking afraid of them and thats why we lost.
Your defence of the manager, whilst admirable is also porous. And getting annoyed with other posters because they disagree with you isn’t cool.

[Mascot]

@wyld.at.hrt

What’s happening with us though is not the above, and that’s what you’re missing. These sorts of results which are normally outliers are happening with regularity this season. You cannot conflate the two.

That’s a fair point. Last night to me felt like ‘one of those’, where you dominate the game, get unlucky in the opposition box, should have had a penalty (we’ve all forgotten that one) but the the opposition score with their first fucking attack. It hurts for a bit, but you just move on.

Except we’ve had about 15 ‘one’s of those’ this this season, so it can’t be written off as such.

I think what you might be missing is that this is not a phenomenon isolated to Liverpool FC. Everyone around us is having problems routinely beating teams they should be beating. If you find a way to distill the fume around Liverpool and then asked someone with no knowledge of the league to say where they think we are, they wouldn’t say fifth.

We can’t be as shit as we think we are and still be fifth, without everyone else being shit too. Or maybe, we can just acknowledge, based on the quality all teams have at their disposal, that the more likely state of affairs is not that everyone is shit. It’s that everyone is in fact really good.

[Limiescouse]

@RedArmada

It’s obvious that we are not struggling because other teams have adopted a more conservative approach; we are struggling because we can’t get even the basics right.

Yeah, I think there are a lot of popular arguments out there that just dont stand up to scrutiny.

I have some sympathy with the idea that independent of everything else we have lost points this year because of changes in set pieces that we were slow to acknowledge and respond to. We were caught short defensively and were too slow to adopt the same dirty tricks on our set pieces that are now seemingly allowed. But for that argument to have that much weight it needs to be one where the rest of the performance is ok to decent, and we’ve lost against the run of play because of isolated set pieces. But that doesnt remotely describe our season. Independent of set pieces we have looked poor on both sides of the ball all season. The games where we’ve looked anything close to our old controlling selves are the rare exceptions. You can probably count them on one hand. Even if the argument that “the league changed over night in ways that no one could have seen” had merit, it would still only describe a small portion of our struggles. And IMO the least concerning part of our struggles.

[mattyhurst]

I’m going make this point on the league, I think its not as strong as last year, but we took a grasp of it early on and won the title at a canter. With us seemingly in transition or simply stuck between two systems no one else is cantering. Arsenal are copying last season, City are stronger and Man Utd are up there (but were until Amorim took over, in fact they were in the same place when he left as they were when Ten Haag left).