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.
This also happened (to a lesser extent) with Klopp. As soon as there is a bad run of form it gives us all the opportunity to latch onto whatever has pissed us off about the boss, and make that the reason for the dip. It’s human nature.
We had these spells under Klopp people would start throwing out the grievances - he is too loyal to the players, he should have binned more off and built from a position of strength, he runs them too hard and that’s why they look tired. He doesn’t have a plan B. He persists with the Brexit midfield.
I don’t have any problem with Liverpool fucking off the last four games of the season because the title was done. They were clearly knackered and they had every right to celebrate and recharge. But if that pissed you off, then you are waiting for the first dip to claiming the two are somehow linked.
I don’t know if we’re talking past each other, but this isn’t about the team’s trip to Dubai at the end of last season, but rather about the fact that Slot was in Dubai during the break and wasn’t training with the players who stayed behind in Kirkby, etc.
Edit
Or maybe it’s just that there’s too much Dubai involved and that just seems really dubious when things are going really badly.
Of the guys who remained at Kirkby, who was even fully fit to train with some of the kids that were not on international duty? Chiesa? Even if there were 2-3 more than usually, it’s no big deal.
The difference will have to be made when everyone is there, in training (not a lot of training time though) and games.
We had the summer we had, with some issues, a tragic event, certain transfer moves happening quite late. Not even gonna imagine how things would be if we had took part in the CWC. Even without Jota’s passing, who knows if things would’ve been better so far.
Now we have to find a way of raising our performance and go back to winning games. This season, it’s gonna take a little bit more than figuring out the “Diaz up top” move from around this time last year, when things really started clicking with some big performances and wins.
From my personal experience with Dutch people, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s exactly what happened. Although not in the “literal sense,” of course.
But I assume that the players are aware of this by now.
Yeah, certainly any conversation about him being at risk are way too reactionary, but we need to be honest and understand that this is a situation can spiral quite quickly if the right decisions aren’t taken. And by that I dont mean that he takes too long to make big changes in our approach but more than avoids the temptation of the Rodgers style being out of ideas so throwing shit at the wall and running for a few weeks with whatever sticks. I get the attraction of wanting us to see us do something different, like 3 at the back or a diamond, but when those changes come from the start of the game that will be the point I see the writing on the wall.
Sorry to come up with this again, but it was in part unnecessary. Elliot, Tsimikas, Quansah were ready to stay, but shown the door. Diaz could have been kept with a little bit more money put into his contract. It’s not as if Bayern are Real Madrid. These four players could have been kept for a while yet, and would be really useful right now. Slot and the recruitment team wanted new toys instead. Coupled with other departures and arrivals, the result is that the squad chemistry, carefully built up by Klopp over the previous years, has gone out of the window in one summer, and needs to be rebuilt.
For me, it’s both related to the above and to the below.
Jota’s loss was a massive hit, no doubt about that. A horrible, heart-breaking incident. However, we need to ask ourselves at which point Jota’s loss becomes a convenient excuse to hide behind for the players? This is elite sport we are talking about, and the players have to be honest with themselves about everything if they want to stay at the top. If some players feel that their performances are diminished because of their mourning, they have to tell the coach. That’s also why the club has a large, expensive squad, and a lot of talented youngsters waiting in the wings. If they don’t tell him, then it means that they think they can perform at their usual level. In that case, Jota’s death can’t serve as an excuse.
I don’t expect a change of formation, nor do I wish it.
A change of midfield shape like we already showed last season, sometimes playing a more classic 4-2-3-1, sometimes playing Szobo a bit deeper (especially in bigger games), in what looked more like a 4-3-3 (narrower centre midfield). That yes. But none of the 3 at the back and diamond shouts.
The rest (and main part, regardless of the formation) will be down to improving different phases of the game, some of which have been problematic since pre-season. Pressing from the front, defensive transition, set-pieces. Now we also see some issues in build-up and control in midfield at times.
And of course, there might have to be more changes of personnel in the team that starts regularly (certain rotation needed of course). I don’t expect him to bench half the team. But it’s clear that in some positions, we are searching and trying to find the winning formula.
Had Slot used Elliot and Quansah last season you’d have a point. But they didn’t get a sniff of any football.
It’s massively disrespectful to people at the top of their profession to say they just wanted new toys to play with.
We are clearly missing Diaz, but I don’t think he was ever going to stay. It would have involved upping his salary beyond 200k and giving him a deal well into his thirties. Never going to happen.
We always going to move on Tsimikas or Robertson, once we signed Kerkez (and everyone was in agreement we needed a left back.
Nobody at the club will ever say that it’s an excuse, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to suggest discussing it is looking for an excuse. It’s a bit unpleasant, to be honest.
My point is that there is no precedent for what they are going through, and we can’t possibly know what it’s like trying to play football with that cloud. Football can’t even become an escape, like it can if they’d suffered a bereavement at home. Jota’s presence is everywhere, Everytime they go to work - a constant reminder that they’ve lost their mate
To be honest, once the initial shock had faded from Jota’s death, I wondered if it would mean winning the title might be beyond us this year.
BOF!
I hope he at least did some homework by watching videos of us whilst having his head waxed.
I mean a coaches job goes beyond shouting from the sidelines. Looking at tactics, movements and trying to understand what’s going right and what’s going wrong is the minimum.
Watching some Manure games to see what they might be up to, catching up on Eintracht might also help at some point.
The work doesn’t stop after pre season!
I think Elliott also pushed either for more game time or a move. And the calibre of players in his positions… we couldn’t guarantee him more. It was time for a change. I don’t think he would’ve been part of difference makers in this side now.
