https://x.com/i/status/2059931954057814101
Should Slot feel more anxious now? Hahahaha!
This is undoubtedly the “come-and-get-me” plea from Andoni Iraola by going to Sky! Lol!
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I think you know the answer to that. He is the one that the opponents allow to have the ball the most. Anyone else gets pressed almost immediately.
One guess as to why.
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Read it, and you’ll tell me. I’ve said since the beginning of this rotten season that I feel sorry for Slot, and every further season-ending injury which happened during the season, comforted me with that idea.
I still think that he should be replaced now, because it would be the easiest thing to do for the club in order to get the fans onboard and a new enthousiasm flooding through the club. But looking at that infernal dynamics taking place during the season, one has to acknowledge that much of it had nothing to do with Slot, and a lot with events totally out of his control. So, the club might take the option to go the hard way, and to see if he has it in himself to steady the ship and get us going again. A risky experiment, but maybe that’s what they are wanting to do? We’ll see shortly.
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It’s part of his job to manage the team’s reaction to circumstances that are out of his control. He failed miserably.
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Gazzetta Della Sport is saying he has chosen Palace over Milan.
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Interesting if true. Palace must be one of the few premier league clubs with almost as little money as Bournemouth
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Exactly. The definition of a sideways move.
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It just doesn’t make sense to do a lateral move for nothing lol…For any head coaches that is worth his salt, they would be looking upwards.
The sky news didn’t surprise me at all as BL and LFC seems to be an upwards move for anyone.
There is a fucking reason why Slot is not gonna resign on his own because anything after that is probably downhill from LFC.
He ain’t gonna get the position of head coach from the Spanish giants, Bayern Munich and PSG after what he shown this season.
Iraola and Slot are almost complete opposites in football philosophy. Slot wants control, possession and to dominate the ball.
Bournemouth by all metrics was the most direct in attack (fewest passes per attacking sequence, fastest ball advancement) and played high risk defense (ultra high line and relentless press, but conceded a lot of counter attacks)
It’s heavy metal football to an extreme. I’d love to watch that style each week but I’m sure others would find it frustrating. Particularly how open we’d be in the back at times.
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And we’re not open at the back now? I’ve seen very little controlled football from us this season. Some games we struggle to string 3 passes together.
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Oh for sure! We were way too open in the back this season.
But we were also awful at tackling, and that is as much a player issue as it is a coaching issue. You can’t play Iraola’s system without having very good tacklers at all 3 levels. You can try it, but you’d concede a lot of goals.
I’d personally be thrilled if we brought him in, I think he’s a really great manager, but I’d worry about a number of our current players being able to play effectively in his system. So he’d need to be given some time.
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Same happened for Alonso, they probably thought of Liverpool directors to be sane, intelligent people. Big mistake.
There is a limit to any manager’s ability to ride out misfortune. You can do so much, but you can’t be a miracle worker. We can reflect that Slot did not play his hand well, but we should also acknowledge it was a pretty shit hand to begin with and that got worse as the season progressed.
We started the 20/21 season favourites for the title, but the season unravelled due to a succession of defensive injuries, as Klopp shuffled his pack moving players back into defence, but thinning out his midfield ranks and begetting more injuries. This was in the context of Klopp - who had much more power that Slot has got - choosing to go into the season with just three Centre Backs, two of which had a record for picking up knocks.
Klopp eventually rallied as he finally used his squad depth - the previously unfancied Nat Phillips, and the young Rhys Williams. But there was a frustration that instead of looking for solutions within his trusted group of players, he could have looked to his fringe players earlier. Especially Nat Phillips, who at that point was 24 years old. Klopp himself reflected that he should have turned to his fringe players earlier instead of playing midfielders out of position.
Seasons get away from managers, bad luck begets bad luck and even the very best can struggle to right the ship.
Set aside the effects of the tragedy, as we can’t know the effects of that, just take Slot at his single word review of the season.
Injuries have totally screwed us, and they aren’t a result of fitness or over playing.
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his new, highly rated, defender did his ACL on his debut.
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his first choice left back did his knee landing awkwardly against Arsenal.
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His new striker had his ankle snapped just as he was beginning to look the part.
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His second choice right back picked up a succession of niggles and knocks having previously had an exemplary injury record
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His other newly recruited striker ruptured his Achilles in a freak accident.
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Another versatile, experienced defensive option did his knee in an awkward landing.
That’s a shit run of luck regardless of everything else that went wrong. A shit hand is still a shit hand regardless of how well it is played.
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They are supposed to have a significant transfer budget this window, and are in Europe. Same competition as Milan after their disastrous end of season, as it happens.
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This is all true and valid reasons why the season wasn’t as successful as we’d all hoped. It’s also true that you’d hope a supposedly top manager could do a better job despite these challenges given the resources he did still have at his disposal.
If he needs a road with relatively few bumps in order to deliver better than we’ve had for the last 12 months he’s going to need a huge slice of luck as well as these new players he’s talking about hitting the ground running. And that on the proviso those who’ve been here this season can shake off the malaise that’s set in.
For me that’s a lot of hoping with not a lot of confidence in everything aligning.
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Yeah, I agree. But I also think to win a league title you need a little luck along the way - a fixture list dropping kindly, a relatively injury free run, your physical, shithouse approach coinciding with the refs just deciding they can’t be arsed to police corners anymore, that kind of thing.
Well, unless you can just obliterate the league by cheating.
Comparisons to 20/21 actually make Slot look bad.
- We lost multiple absolute key players simultaneously early in the season and in their absence maintained title challenging form across the first half of the season.
- We then suffered a further collection of injuries far beyond anything we had to deal with this season and concentrated in areas where we were already short. That precipitated a season ruining run of bad results where we were admittedly terrible.
- At our worst in that period we looked bad, but we never looked lost like the players didn’t know what was expected of them or lacked trust in it. We simply were fielding selections that made it difficult to win premier league games.
- We pulled out that within the space of about 2 months and returned to title challenging form for the rest of the season, all while still having to call on back up players so far down the pecking order they quite clearly, even then, were not individually up to premier league standard.
That is a comparison that does not make Slot and his performance this season look good.
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