We did a similar thing under Klopp at various times, so this is not something you can lay at Slots feet, but seems to be something coming from the club itself giving the players a bit of a break when the weight of midweek to weekend games eases up.
Perhaps this is something the English football needs to swallow their pride and accept the rest of Europe having a mid-season break is actually a good thing.
I get the historical importance of the Xmas/NY period for fans, but why do we not have a break in mid January for a couple of weeks? And not that half-arsed split week shite they tried back in 21/22 but a full 2 weeks off allowing the players the chance to get away have a full reset
Absolutely. I’d suggest that drop him completely. Tell him he can prepare for the AFCON and we’ll see him next year. Macca also doesn’t deserve to start games and we’ve been fucked over by palace re Guehi.
Flo is clearly our most talented player and he must be integrated so I want to see him starting. Personally I’d refocus the team around him. Grav, Dom, Curtis in midfield, Flo ahead and Hugo or Alex with Chiesa or Cody up top. Kerkez also deserves to be persisted with at LB and the question really is whether Conor is good enough at RB. I think playing Dom there has unbalanced us - a bit like when Jurgen played Hendo and Fabinho at CB - and the team as a whole is worse off.
Ironically Slot signing Wirtz and Isak could be his down fall.
He cannot have a player that all of Europe wanted stuck on the bench while the likes of Mo and Mac stink the place out week in and week out.
Did we really need Isak after we got Ekitike? Im not sure we did. Everyone said we needed a CB and we went out and spent £125m on another forward.
Ekitike on the bench is a joke. Been our best forward.
Salah is in terrible form, and he shouldn’t be starting, however he hasn’t looked like he has deteriorated physically to the point that he is done at the highest level. For as bad as he has been, Slot has done absolutely nothing to help him. On the contrary, by banishing him so far wide and leaving him isolated against 2 and 3 defenders in almost every match he has made things worse for him. Bradley and Frimpong also haven’t offered any decent passing, as they have stunk the place out.
Maybe, Salah starts getting better if Slot positions him closer to the box, closer to the No. 9 and the midfield. His only good game against Atletico came from there. Maybe Salah utilizes an overlapping full back better than an underlapping one. Maybe the whole team starts playing better with a plan and a structure in place. Because this isn’t a Salah phenomenon; this is happening all over the pitch. You have midfielders evacuating midfield areas. You have Kerkez virtually neutered by being stuck in his own half and/or being ignored by Gakpo when he does make a run, which also raises the question of how long Slot is going to put up with it. And you do have underperforming players like Salah and Isak starting ahead of more deserving ones.
Long story short, Salah has been terrible, he deserves to be dropped, but he isn’t the cause of what’s happening, he’s a symptom.
As expected, there’s been an incredible amount of criticism from all quarters about everything. Among other things, I wasn’t aware that Slot was vacationing with his family during the national break. Was that also the case during Klopp’s time?? That’s obviously not going over well now.
It’s a load of rubbish, but also not surprising now as people look for reasons and explanations absolutely everywhere.
The same characters will then criticise the football schedule on another day…
There was no serious reason for Slot to be at Kirkby during that break, even if you had a few seniors more than usually. And some of them weren’t even training or in full training.
What, he should’ve went into 1v1 sessions with Chiesa, tell him not to have the ball bounce 5 metres off him when he makes first contact?
Football is a job where you’re still busy regardless whether you’re in Liverpool or Dubai.
Yeah, John Gibbons is convinced Arne Slot went into complete off time in Dubai. And that is somehow connected to our performance and result yesterday.
The guy won the league at his first attempt. He has credit in the bank and he will be backed to get us through this. There is absolutely no chance he will be sacked.
It should also be remembered that at this football club the manager does not sign the players. That’s the case at most clubs, but the narratives persist in English football around a manager’s signings, he’s spent a lot so he’s under pressure etc. We’ve really not moved on from the idea of a manager as an autocrat.
He is the head coach. He is an important voice in the recruitment but not the only voice, and the strategy that led to us spending £400m was led by Edwards and Hughes.
There are a lot of grievances being aired and I appreciate it’s tempting to link the current form to whatever has pissed us off in the past. Did it annoy you that the club downed tools as soon as the league was won? Fair enough, that’s your opinion - but it’s a stretch to suggest the difficulties we’re having now are a direct consequence of that.
Here are the facts
The club are trying to integrate a lot of new players. Relationships need to be developed
A lot of the reliable performers are in terrible form (Bradley, Van Dijk, Konate, Mac Allister, Salah, Gakpo). This may be linked to the above. Or it may be linked to the below.
The team lost a loved team mate in the summer in tragic circumstances. There is no precedent for how teams deal with this, and no sample for understanding the effect. It’s impossible to know how much this has kicked our team in the guts. I said this in the Jota thread, and I appreciate I might be projecting, but I thought it was noticeable yesterday that our performance nosedived on twenty minutes, and didn’t recover until half time.
There are some challenges ahead of slot, and he is going to have to work hard with his players to push through this.
Situations like this are a classic coaches dilemma. The big question is change it or not change it?
I don’t think people understand quite how difficult it is to burn your system and start again in the middle of a season, and certainly in the middle of a two game a week cycle, with no training time. Calls to go to three at the back or revert to a narrow diamond system need to bear in mind…
is there the coaching time available to embed this system?
What impact does it have on morale and cohesion for a manager to spend the summer coaching a system and then drop it at the first poor spell.
You also have to try to look objectively at the performances without being swayed by the narrative created by the result. What does the data suggest about these games.
I think both the underlying data and the eye test suggests that we are not playing quite as badly as the noise says we are. We are not playing well enough either, and there are big issues we need to sort going forward.
So I don’t think we need to throw out the baby with the bathwater. The decisions that need to be made are
We need to tighten up at the back, and not lose concentration in key moments. That should be the starting point. We have to stop conceding soft goals. I don’t really understand what Joe Gomez needs to do to get fifteen minutes when we are struggling, and why Slot is so reluctant to use him as a centre back or a full back, preferring to weaken us in midfield rather than turn to a lad who has been around the club for a decade.
A short term decision needs to be made on Mo Salah, who is enduring the most wretched run of form of his career. It will take balls to bench Salah, but his form is really stinking the place out, and no player should expect to be an automatic pick. Not only do you address the problem that we’re carrying Salah, but you also send a message to the rest of the team that no one is guaranteed a place, and if Mo Salah is droppable then so are you.
I also think we need to really go all in on Wirtz. I don’t see how he is going to get used to the pace of the game, or form the relationships he needs to on bench. I thought he was the best player on the pitch when he came on yesterday.
When the season starts the way it has there are lots of valid avenues for criticism of Slot. Going at him for taking a few days with his family while the players are in international break is absolutely not one of them, but the fact this has gained traction tells you what a challenging situation we are in that people are grasping for straws.
Well, obviously this criticism is now coming sharply from match-going fans and fan groups, who have always been very reserved when it comes to personal attacks. When Anfield Wrap picks this now up as a “problem”, it spreads, and the genie is out of the bottle.