Arne Slot - Head Coach (Part 2)

Thats actually 6, but worse than my 5!

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Oh yeah it is 6 :smiling_face:

Everyone knows Virgil’s gonna be a coach, may as well accelerate it, he’s leadership quality!

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I don’t know much about baseball or that specific situation but from the one and only article I read it sounded like a Hughes/Edwards type equivalent went to the owners to recommend that change be made and it wasn’t entirely results driven.

But we’ve seen them accept a down season in the past and stick with the manager. Their nature appears to be one of ā€œwe’d rather be late making the right decision than early in making the wrong one.ā€ Maybe they think it’s worth seeing how he starts next season but are ready to pull the plug early enough to still have a decent season if the rot continues.

Again, I can’t see what would be behind them thinking that but they’ve shown they can be ruthless when the feel it necessary but patient if they do believe that’s the right thing.

There’s a small part of me wondering whether there’s something in the fact Iraola has announced he’s moving on but nothing about where he’s going. Surely you don’t walk out on potentially a first ever european campaign with your current club to just see what offers come your way in the summer, even if you will be in demand.

There’s an obvious connection to Hughes. He plays a more high tempo/pressing style similar to latter day Klopp. Utilises a number 9 as focal point of the attack. Plays with pacey width from wide forwards and overlapping fullbacks. Typically that’s in a 4-2-3-1 which would suit our squad without major surgery needed.

He also develops players like Semenyo, Kerkez, Scott and Huijsen and now Kroupi and Rayan seem like the next ones off the conveyor belt. Would be great for Rio, Nyoni, the two young CBs and possibly even Elliott.

And he managed the squad turnover really well, making them even better despite losses of key players in pretty much every window.

As much as I love Xabi if we did move on from Slot I think Iraola would be the man for me.

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Not seen much of that leadership quality you mention on the pitch this season.

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Yeah, I cannot really speak to the baseball of it either. I just know there were questions around the Red Sox manager at the end of the last season, and his reputation with Red Sox fans was nowhere near as far gone as Slot’s seems to be with LFC fans.

Also notable that one of the major lines of disagreement between the manager and the Boston front office was the failure to develop young prospects. Not an area I have been impressed with Slot with either

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Also don’t know anything about baseball, but since it cropped up with the manager being sacked a couple of weeks back and FSG followed up stating that they won’t accept mediocrity, I thought I’d take a look.

Took one look at all the baseball leagues and thought, what a load of nonsense. All the teams are around about the 50% win to 50% loss ratios anyway, mediocre fits the majority of them. If you compare it to football, then mid table Chelsea, Everton or Sunderland understandably show that kind of ratio.

You could justifiably sack White Sox, Athletics or Nationals for the same mediocrity.

So all the talk about detailed data, poor Liverpool performances, poor Liverpool results, I’m not sure they can correctly read the analysis of our season or compare it to baseballs.

Therefore likely to just simplify it and say, do we like the fella in a business relationship and personal type of way? If their answer is yes, then likely to start next season.

Statistical analysis is far more important (and far easier) for baseball than football. It is pointless to compare win ratios directly across the sports - note that the PL is about to be won by a team with a 66% win percentage though. But if you play 160+ games, there will be more outliers than you see in footy, particularly because baseball is a far more individual sport. Cora was fired right after a garish 17-1 win, it wasn’t purely results that drove it.

However, they are among the most sophisticated thinkers on applying analytics to sport there are - when they started using it, almost no one else was. I really don’t think they are deciding that Slot is a good guy and they should keep him. There are undoubtedly some analytics they are applying. FSG are probably as baffled as I am as to how a manager could so greatly exceed expectations for 6 months, deliver a title in his first year, and then seem so hapless in his second. They may just be wondering if there will be some kind of reversion to the mean.

What I believe they are missing is the team mentality aspect, and how that connects to the fans. I just don’t see how Slot is going to turn around the former, and the latter means the pressure will be astronomical right out of the gate in August. Just as with Cora, when they look at the decision again in October, the decision to keep him will be contrary to some elements that are clearly already there.

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This is all very true, which is why you have to take his comments about that with a grain of salt. He will be the last to know he’s being sacked, in all likelihood. And this club is generally and historically very good at keeping their moves under wraps until the time comes. For all we know, they could have reached an agreement with Xabi already and we wouldn’t know until the time comes.

If that sounds like a bit of copium, it definitely is. But that’s all we’ve got right now because the public message from FSG has been air tight re: Slot so far.

By the way, if there are any lessons to be learned from the last go around, it’s that we weren’t linked with Slot as Klopp’s replacement at first, and he wasn’t leaked as the leading candidate until shortly before he was hired. Everyone was talking about Xabi and Frank and Amorim and De Zerbi. So many of the other names we actually explored weren’t leaked until months after Slot was appointed.

So, no matter what is being publicly leaked, we’ll know when we know. And we’ll know if Slot is staying no later than within 48 hours of the season ending, IMO.

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The only one of those factors that I can accept is Jota.

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https://x.com/i/status/2054966709157531831

Slot continues to baffles and gaslight the fans…

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Might say more about the stupidity or incompetence of the Journos involved.

It’s not the most likely, but this one would definitely be the most enjoyable.

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With all the genuine concerns about how we have gone through an entire season without showing any real improvement, statistics like you have provided are really just wasting space in this thread.

If statistics like this held any weight on their own, Klopp probably would have lost his job twice: In 20/21 he and the team dropped points in 18 games in the PL and in 22/23 they dropped points in 19 games in the PL.

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It’s surely largely to do with the existing setup when he arrived. The longer he’s had in the chair the worse we’ve looked; this isn’t an ā€˜outlier/reversion to the mean’ kinda situation.

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Well, the OP of that post was just simply stating that Arne Slot is just simply cherry picking his stats where the real picture is that the points dropped was not all down to travelling for the UCL matches…

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It isn’t just that he cherry picked the stats.

Knowingly or not, he misrepresented the facts. He said that most of the dropped points came after European games when the opposite is true.

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And yet people wonder why others have so much of an issue when he opens his mouth

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That reminded me of this

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Arne was talking specifically about away games though wasn’t he?

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I can see why, on the surface of it, that is concerning. But stats like this lose a lot of relevance when taken out of context.

The reason why fifth place will be taken with a low total is the same reason why the teams around us are also struggling to post a decent tally, the champions will end up with a poor total, and the points needed to avoid relegation will be higher than it’s been for a while too. This is a league with strength right down to the bottom, and anyone is capable of giving any team a game.

You present this stat with the suggestion that we’ve been shit and lucky to get away with it. Whereas I think a big factor in why we’ve been shit is also affecting everyone else as well.

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