We have no idea what they’re being told, what instructions they’re receiving, or what they’re actually supposed to be training or improving. It seems they’re either not managing it, or they’re not getting the right instructions. Eventually, they reach a point where they stop believing what they’re being told or start doubting themselves. And that’s exactly how this team is performing now.
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6 months ago this chump was telling us all on live TV that he didn’t have the answers…fast forward to yesterday, after a defeat…guess what? The lightbulbs gone off in that hollow head of his and he suddenly knows what we need to do to improve, this guy will say and do anything to save his own skin when in reality he hasn’t got a clue.
If our careless owners had listened to the fans calls to sack him then with all still to play for, there’s a good chance we’d have walked away from this season with a trophy or 2.
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looks like the narrative is turning against slot in the press
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You are more optimistic than me. Even acknowledging the absolute train crash of events having hit this season, I’ve lost my faith in him to be honest…
Still hoping that he’ll turn it around though, and that I’ll be proven wrong. But he and his players don’t demean themselves as if they had the slightest idea about what to do, and that is the most concerning part for me.
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Yes, but we were already at that point recently. Then everyone backtracked again, since the club confirmed the slot for the umpteenth time. It feels a bit like he now has more confirmations and expressions of confidence than wins this season.
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We’re still good as a fanbase then, because in some other places it means multiple changes per season…
Maybe that narrative is comping from the club?
Last week we had this being said from James Pearce:
“The decision-makers still retain faith in him and believe, with the right additions this summer, Slot can turn things around in the same way that [Jurgen] Klopp did after a disappointing fifth-placed finish in 2022-23.”
Similar sentiments from Paul Joyce, Sam Wallace and others.
Now Pearce’s tone is somewhat different:
Owners Fenway Sports Group wants to give Slot the opportunity to put things right and this is a squad clearly in need of reinforcements, but concern stems from how it’s the same old problems that continue to blight performances.
…
Whether it’s a tactical issue or more to do with mentality, the buck stops with Slot.
My guess is that they don’t want to say anything before the end of the season, or at least before the final game if we have secured CL by then. I can see why making supportive noises before then makes sense. However, they will only agree to let him go when a replacement is lined up.
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It’s not that Slot doesn’t think you have to be fit and strong compete, it’s that he reportedly believes the games give players all they need to get and stay fit and the more important thing to do between games is to focus on recovery. The balance between fitness work and recovery is one that everyone struggles with at the top level TBF given how insane the schedule is, but it appears Slot has ended up with poorly prepared players either because of his ideas or a bad application of them that has leaned too much into recovery.
There is just a big a question for me though over the messages that are being sent with they way he is implementing this idea. It’s not just that we’re not doing much fitness work and looking undercooked. It’s that we’re not even spending much time on the training ground. There is also a big difference between giving them the afternoon off and allowing them to fly to wherever for a day, especially with the frequency this is allowed to happen. When you see questions being raised from multiple angles about the seriousness with which we take our work it is reasonable to question if this amount of time off, and the seeming lack of restrictions around it, are sending a signal to the players.
Beyond that, there is an awful lot of quality work that can still be done on the training ground without adding more recovery stress. We seem to passing up a lot of opportunity to put in that work and it is showing in the disjointed way we play.
Possibly most damaging of all though there has been a clear inconsistency in Slot’s messaging this season and there is nothing that erodes a leader’s credibility faster than that.
- He preached control for months and on day 1 when Carra questioned him about the loss of control after taking a 2-0 lead against Bournemouth he responded defensively by talking about the importance of giving the fans an entertaining playing style. An inconsistent answer to the question, and then shit all over by the way he’d subsequently respond to the troubles of the side as the season went on.
- Early in the season he asked for patience for this much changed team to come together because there isn’t much time for them to put in on the training ground. Remember the debate over the weaker than expected side against Palace in the league cup? Slot’s argument was that by “resting” the majority of first team players he had a couple more hard training session he could put them through. It was an acceptable argument in isolation, but again undercut by how much time they were given away from the training ground and given with little to no travel restrictions.
The team is playing like too many of the players are lost and confused. It is not hard to connect many of the dots to a conclusion that its because we have a poorly drilled game plan that has contradictions in it and provided to them by a guy who has hurt his own credibility with the players with his own inconsistencies (and possibly his own interest in having days off).
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We are going to limp along to the end of the season and just about do enough to secure CL football for next season. The noise around Slot will grow, now that we are almost there, and at the end it will be swift.
I refuse to believe we won’t act. It seems such an obvious move. And with an absence of news of Alonso going anywhere, the conclusion I’m drawing is that he’s in the bag.
It feels a bit Occam’s Razor to me, such that I will be shocked if we don’t do the obvious thing.
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The culture concern is real, and people need to stop dismissing it just because we won the league.
Klopp’s genius was never primarily about football. It was about belonging. Players ran through walls not because of what was in their contracts but because they genuinely felt part of something bigger than themselves. That’s not easy to build and it’s apparently not easy to maintain either.
When your captain and your talisman (salah) are taking grievances to the press rather than resolving them in-house, that’s not noise, that’s a signal. And honestly, this might not even be a Slot problem. It could run deeper than him, a board and sporting director dynamic that Klopp largely absorbed and shielded the dressing room from. Now that shield is gone.
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Trust me, John Henry wants what I’m smoking
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Tactics and game planning aside, my biggest issue with Slot is simple: FITNESS.
Klopp spent years making Liverpool one of the fittest, hardest-running and hardest working teams in Europe. That was a non-negotiable identity. You knew what you were getting every single week: relentless pressing, high intensity, teams ground into submission by the 70th minute because we simply outworked them.
That’s gone. We don’t press anymore. We don’t run as we mean it. And by the 60th minute, half the squad looks like they’re playing their third game in five days, even when they’re not. That’s not a schedule problem. That’s a conditioning problem.
Klopp’s fitness standards weren’t accidental; they were the product of a specific culture, a specific staff, and a non-negotiable demand placed on every player from day one. Something in that has clearly slipped, and no amount of pretty build-up play covers for a team that runs out of legs before the game is even won.
You can argue about formations and transfers all day. But if your players aren’t fit, none of the rest of it matters.
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I have long suspected that a loose agreement had already been reached that Slot would leave by mutual consent at the end of the season and the best way to ensure that happens on the best of terms for all parties was for the club to be steadfast in their public backing of him for as long as was necessary to get us over the line to our minimum acceptable outcomes (CL qualification). I suspected the players were already read into this as well explaining some of their disjointed performances.
Some of Mo’s recent comments are the biggest signal that is not actually true. He has indicated he has already seen the culture start to erode, the loss of players pushing the train in Klopp’s parlance. But he went further to say he has serious concerns about it eroding further and has already spoken to the senior people at the club about what he has seen and the importance of addressing it. It is relevant not just that Mo had that conversation, but that he disclosed it in his interview. Mo is very calculating and youd think he’d only do that if he was trying to create some change. If he already knew Slot was leaving, why would that be something he was still trying to address (admittedly, based on a big but fair assumption this loss of culture is related to Slot)?
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It might be that Slot will be mutually consented, and he knows it, but the players are not in the know about it. They may have their suspicions, but they don’t know, and that is the club’s way of keeping a lid on it, between them and Slot?
So standards are slipping, things are disjointed, it’s limping along to the finish line and all the rest of it. Mo is sounding the alarm but perhaps the requisite reset is already in hand?
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Yeah maybe that is the easiest way to square that circle…on the thing I admittedly totally made up 
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The players claim that Klopp leaving came as a shock to them. I suppose there, the midfield rebuild was effective and we were playing well. They must have seen that he was under stress, but no idea that he was on his way.
The only positive about Slot right now for me is that he makes me completely lose interest in football. Then I can avoid a bad mood and spend time with my kid. 
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