Holy! Didn’t pay attention to TAN for half a day and the Slot thread exploded with close to 100 new posts.
I am feeling exhausted just by reading the posts in this thread. There are so much anger and discontent, not just towards Slot, but at each others. I hate this kind of divide between us.
Stepping back a little bit, I can say I am certainly losing interest in the way LFC is going. Watching us play just conjuring up negative emotions.
I just wish that the hierarchy did not keep emphasizing the backing of the head coach, whom appeared to have no way of turning the fortune around (or maybe it’s just the reporters answered the same question multiple times daily, giving the supporters the impression that FSG has said it multiple times on backing Slot). Unfortunately, with the poor performance of the team, these reporting of backing Slot just keep on stoking the flames of angers from supporters.
I’ve been thinking something similar. And I suspect there is a bit of a stalemate going on with the contract.
Totally get that he didn’t want to move his family when his kids were at school and stuff, but the way he acts with the area is that he can’t wait to get away and chance he can.
I get the calls for decency and the need to focus on the football, but unfortunately one of the reasons leadership fails, or at least one of the ways we see it failing, is in personal faults coming to the surface under the pressure and if people see them we should not be required out of some false sense of decency to ignore them
Slot has indeed largely come across a decent man, but the mask has slipped a little a few times this season in his public comments. Yeah the pressure is huge (such that a man who will never have to work another day in his life can ever really feel pressure) but there is now a collection of instances this season where he has conducted himself in a way that leaves you grimacing, and potentially causing an erosion of the of personal respect people might have had for him. It isnt easy to retain your dignity when publicly failing under such a harsh spotlight, but again, that is the job and if you cannot do it you end up only accelerating your own exit as people start turning on you for non-football reasons.
Of course, the ultimate Tompkinsisms…we’re actually really good you people just dont understand what you’re seeing [in 10s of 1000s of words]. He’s being doing this for over 20 years now.
As Slot punts a Kitten while doing a Nazi salute “gosh, there are people who will just reflexively criticize him for anything these days. It doesnt matter what he does he’s going to get criticism”
It is what it is. If we lose out on Alonso because FSG wants to back Slot, what can you do. If they end up sacking Slot in November after another summer of investment doesn’t solve our problems, they’ll look stupid. Especially if Alonso turns Chelsea around.
Hopefully, by that point, they can lure Klopp back for a rescue job and/or get an Ancelotti or Enrique on the phone. Maybe Nagelsmann.
Of course, the most ideal scenario is one in which Slot turns it around, but we won’t know until after the summer. If they want to back Slot with another 200-300M, that’s a mighty big bet to make on him. And I hope it pays off.
It is not entirely out of thin air mind. I will concede that I am often more cynical than most. I also by nature (and training) tend to look for what the downside risks are in any decision. I also have a desperate need to make my own piss level football experience relevant to what people at this level experience and lived through a team falling off a cliff the way this side has done and because of all that I was calling out a few issues for concern this summer, all of which appear to have raised their head over the course of the season.
You cannot tell how someone deals with adversity by watching them take over a strong side and be immediately successful. A bad patch was always going to come and there was zero track record on how Slot would respond. That is not just a blank slate, but a terrifying gap in his experience for someone to have to learn on the job what coming through adversity is like.
People who were not there when the things were put in place to make it successful rarely intuitively get it when they entre that environment. Everyone thinks they are working hard and conducting themselves properly, but few really are. That was why our culture was so special, and its why for all the derision about it, the no dickheads rule was so important. It takes a ton of effort to keep that in place as personnel turn over occurs and we coupled that with a young, relatively inexperienced manager in place who himself was still new to the club. There is an element of Chesterton’s Fence about it, and we have gone about tearing out every fence we can find and then wondering why things are now different. And no, just to get ahead of the objections/defenses, I dont view these things as situations Slot was subjected to but things he very much accelerated with his wishes and views on players, and then failed to respond to the void the big turn over created.
The Wirtz of it all. If was a confounding signing with no one really getting confidently what he was coming here to do. Sure we were all excited, but it was mostly done with a sense of the people running things having earned our confidence that they at least knew the answer to that. But if they didnt, or the answer wasnt right, then it had the capacity to really destabilize things.
So you’re basically saying this is my point but when I’m asked to show how I’ve come to this conclusion I don’t have any evidence to back my beliefs up?
Come on to this thread every day to see if anything has occurred,nothing new today except a debate about a petition which in my view is stupid and will have zero effect.The owners would have been more concerned at the reaction at Anfield,particularly against Chelsea as they should!
Journos who know as much as we does over 100 posts this morning and nothing has changed.
The revisit of Xabi going to Chelsea,don’t like it but that is his call, I don’t believe it, yet!
If the owners stay with Slot,to me that is unbelievably stupid…it is their money, but our club!
Anyway,it gives us something to talk about.
The more I read the article the more dissapointed I am in Reddy. This is by far the worst article she’s ever written about Liverpool.
"Slot, as Spearman’s algorithm suggested, was perfect for the situation Liverpool were in.
That was then. It would be surprising if the algorithm found him ‘top of the top’ for where the club are now, and their required direction of travel after a season which feels a betrayal not just sylistically, but to the very essence of defiance and courage that had defined the team for a decade."
What would the algorithm have said about Klopp based on the last season at Dortmund?
There has been a ton written about that - we were very confident their early season and results were an anomaly for a team still playing well but just not getting results.
Precisely!!!
Algorithms, of the sort created by Spearman are not tools to be used as snapshots.
She’s fundamentally misunderstood their purpose in the decision making process…
If the owners, together with Edwards and Hughes decide to keep Slot at least for another season, it is not because they are indifferent or blind to our ridiculous bad season in terms of playing coherent football and getting overrun in many of the games. It can be only because they believe that the mitigating factors play a much bigger part than some of us think they are. Also, I am sure there already had been conversations with Slot and through these conversations, they must have enough to believe that Slot deserves one more season, and together with the mitigating factors, to back him.
And I respect them for that, not because I necessarily think it is the right decision but because they are willing to take and make decisive calls despite opposing voices. They showed a willingness to back down when needed and also to stand firm when believed to be needed. I think that is important as top level executives.
Of course they have to make their bed and lie in it and if things do not turn out well, then they would have to show a similar mettle to make a decisive action then and accept that they are going to get choruses of I told you so.
But its still early days, decisions are still to be made, so the summer will be an interesting one to see the level of backing that Slot gets, that is if he stays.
He’s a bit like that writer for The Guardian, I forget his name, who gets annoyed at goals being scored because he argues “goals are a poor metric of who the better team is”.
It sounds many of these guys really just don’t like football and should stick to baseball or cricket or something where their are more clearcut statistical discussions.
