Honestly none of the signings bar Hugo has done anything to show they are worthy to be in a top half PL team, nevermind us.
Now, don’t be too hasty…Breathe!
U mean breathe?
When Klopp first took over we saw a plan. His style and philosophy was clear.
Slot has no visible plan. He can’t talk of a plan and goes on a rant about how to beat us with long balls so I find it impossible to trust him to turn this around.
This has been SIX months of under performance including the tail end of last season. This is not a blip.
I think what puzzles me is that Michael Edwards and Julian Ward will have sanctioned all our new signings and presumably have some sort of concept about how they will fit in.
It would be reasonable to assume that Slot was part of this plan and that he is aware of how we are meant to be playing. If it’s not working, is that a coaching issue or something fundamentally wrong with the stats guys?
It’s odd that the one new player who has definitely shon is Ekitiké, who may have been on the club’s radar, but certainly wasn’t intended to come in this window.
Maybe not the most important issue, but this is one of the reasons why it bugs me that you hardly ever see/hear these people. Can’t really blame the fans or the media when they only talk about the head coach, because that is all they ever get to see. Seems like they have adopted the continental approach internally, but not externally. Maybe it’s different in other leagues, but at least in the Bundesliga these people are held under public scrutiny/responsibility basically every week.
I don’t know if this is the thread to talk about this but I feel Slot is trying to solve a problem that didn’t really existed.
Last season, Salah was told specifically to tuck in and get closer or even inside the penalty box as much as he can. The condition was that he didn’t need to defend as much as he needed to with Gravenberch and Konate covering that area. As for Gakpo, he was to come from the deep, cut in at the edge of opposition box to go more centrally to take a shot or a cross if the opportunity doesn’t presents itself. As for the CAM then, it was provide support and press the opposition while the midfield duo progresses the ball from the deep with fast vertical passes. Out of possession, Liverpool would defend in an aggressive 4-2-4 formation with the CAM pushing up to form a duo upfront with the ST, allowing LFC to press uniformly on an opposition defence who is technically not gifted. The downside of the 4-2-4 formation is that it allows the opposition to take advantage of the space between the midfield and the defence to play balls behind the defence which led to us conceding a few goals and a fuck load of dangerous chances.
This season, I felt Slot was too focused on that 4-2-4’s weakness out of possession and totally abandoned the whole system for a more safer one. This season, he went with a super high line 4-3-3 out of possession formation by trying to have more bodies in the midfield line but that brought on a whole new host of other problems.
Suddenly, Liverpool is unable to press effectively from the front as the forwards are effectively outnumbered by the opposition defence, the midfield is forced to step out of position to intercept that led to holes in the midfield which can be exploited by quick vertical passes, the full backs are unable to cover for the midfield as stepping into the midfield will let the opposition wingers roam unchallenged . Thus, it led to the central defence being unshielded as fuck with a super high line with just two man centrally. It is not helped that Marma is one gk that likes to stay in his fucking box.
In possession, it gets even weirder. In possession, it is a 2-4-1-3?? The worse part is the forward 3 are so far apart from each other. Salah and Gakpo being asked to hold the width negates their offensive strengths altogether. The fullbacks are then asked to underlap or even tuck in as the 3rd CB which also negates their chance at varying their type of crosses from out wide. They can only do 1 which is to pull it to the byline.
The players that we bought this season were meant to fill in last season’s system but Slot for some reason decided to discard it wholesale…
Fair enough of a comment…
Not an excuse…then gives a shit excuse
Didn’t Hughes sack O’Neil to bring in Iraola, even though O’Neil had firmly established himself as a popular figure there and helped them beat relegation? Maybe that was the plan all along with Slot, too, but I’m not sure he can help us beat relegation.
I saw this on social media: since March, Liverpool have played 28 matches, winning 14, losing 12 drawing 2. Scored 49, conceded 40. We broke 10K post limit on Man United thread TWICE while they were hitting such a laughable run of form. The shoe’s on the other foot now.
Looks good on paper, in practice I’m not convinced it works as well as people may think. You’d still have the same issues of an ineffective forward press and a midfield that isn’t capable of passing the ball forward.
Hughes was the one who chose Slot to replace Klopp, not sure why he’d plan to appoint him with the idea of sacking him a year later.
We can’t press as teams are going long and not allowing us to press.
Then when they play long and pick the 2nd ball or force us in to a mistake there are massive gaps through the middle, therefore a 3rd CB should hopefully fill that hole.
People keep talking about the press when it isn’t applicable against how most teams are playing against us.
But then you’ve hit on another issue, we aren’t winning any second balls in midfield. Virgil, Konate and another CB can win all of the headers they like, nobody in midfield is then positioned correctly to pick them up or strong enough to win the resulting challenge.
If a back three is seen as the way forward then we may as well sack Slot now and appoint Glasner because Slot is not going to move away from a back four. For all the plaudits we can give him over his 18 or so months here, being tactically flexible and having a plan B are not particularly high on that list.
You can play whichever formation you want, but if you’re not compact, the difference will not be big enough.
You could end up creating even more problems for yourself, turn in cyrcles.
Didn’t we just praise Slot for daring to make changes early in the game, changing tactics to win games in the 2nd half last season? Now suddenly he is tactically inept?
The only thing we don’t know for sure, and which may have some bearing on the disjointed way we are playing, is that we have no clue what the relationship is like between AS and the players. This could be either collectively as a group, or singularly as individuals that have differing traits of personality.
New manager bounce last season, new relationships etc, along with some shrewd tactical nous got us over the PL winning line within the first 6months. Have relations gone downhill since then… who knows.
One thing is for sure though, in the workplace, the likelihood is that none of us on here would give 100% commitment if/when we work for a boss we do not like.
Tactically, AS may be a real wizard for all we know, but behind the scenes he might not be very likeable - but then, again, who knows, he might be very likeable..! We see him in front and centre at a press conference, but also, we have seen him front and centre endorsing Wayne Lineker in a photo shoot. The reality is, none of us know the real AS
Street angel, house devil was a phrase my old nan used to describe someone that had two sides to them… Until something of substance comes out into the open, we just don’t know what is happening behind the scenes, and we don’t know if behind the scenes there is a problem that needs resolving to help in improving our form back to winning ways…
What I do know, and there is no need to be pushing the panic button just yet, we have dropped 12points in quick succession. The reasons for this could be many and predominately futile, or there could be a main catalyst that needs smoothing over…
Either way, without the support and backing of the majority of the fanbase, this hole we are digging ourselves into will only get deeper. My gut feeling is that AS is the right man for the job, and we have to hope he has what it takes in bringing us success consistently, but he also is on a learning curve, as are the players. Only a fool would predict the verdict before the jury armed with the facts, re-enters the courtroom with a decision.
COYR :0)
Slot will be given time, that’s a given. It’s up to him, to make it count. He keeps this up and sooner or later he will be a goner.
Also, it’s pretty amazing that there are still people arguing about the merits of dropping this player or that player when the entire fucking team looks like it can’t string two passes together.
Alisson, Szoboszlai and Chiesa are the only players out of the entire squad performing at their level or above it. That should say something.
Right. And Rodgers would have too, bar a slip. It wouldn’t have made him any fitter to manage Liverpool then, as it doesn’t make Slot any fitter now. It just buys him some time.
Performances rank above all and ours have been going from bad to worse for 9 months now.
Nevertheless, no one thinks that this squad is lacking quality and should be performing like this. There were issues from the get-go, and they weren’t obscure to anyone paying attention, but going from a contending team to whatever this thing is, is mind-boggling. I’ve said this before, but I’m more and more convinced that the preseason was a mess and it’s not solely down to what happened to Jota.
MacAllisters loss of form and been out of the team,
should be factored in to our loss of form
we really miss his combative nature in the midfield
I blame @SBYM for going on RedCafe and trolling them!