Whereas I think the recruitment looks like the long term plan is a 442 diamond or a box midfield.
Which is weird because all the talk about Slot before he arrived was how much he loved pacy wingers who can beat a man.
Jokes aside, Arsenal have been doing as many shitty performances in the same period, and they’ve been trophyless for how many years.
With Slot, knives haven’t been out because despite the often unconvincing performances, we were getting the results.
This season, we started by getting them, rather fortunately, combined with grit and passion, and then we started losing them in a reverse manner. Hence the knives out. Now that we lost some, the unconvincing performances are more vivid.
We are losing games by one goal (often a diabolical one), and Arsenal is winning them by one goal (often a diabolical one). Arsenal barely concedes, so that (often diabolical) goal is enough. We concede a lot, but score almost just as many, so that (often diabolical) goal that makes the difference is making the difference.
Mind you, in those months of “shitty” performances, we got knocked out of the CL by the team that won everything, and Luis Enrique said we were his toughest opponents.
In these past couple of months, in our shitty performances we’ve beaten the seemingly flawless Arsenal, without conceding, and by outplaying them more than the 1-0 shows.
The team can perform. I’m confident they will start performing. Our main problem is consistency, and how much time it will take to find it. We either play wondrous football for about 30% of a game, which clearly is not enough, or find a way to get the result for a few games, and then not, for the next few.
Obviously we do need solutions for many things, and defense is one area, starting with pressing.
But what I’m trying to point out is that this team and this manager have the quality to play competitively.
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It is in proportion to the distance we have gone backwards, the rapidity of the travel and the utter lack of response to what is now a consistent failing.
Not everyone criticizing Slot is asking for his head and it is a totally fair and normal response in any business environment to be critical of a well regarded employee who has overseen something that has gone desperately tits up and ask questions of them in terms of what they intend to do to address it.
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Totally agree but on form he also had great vision to pick out a pass to kill any defensive shape in midfield, I was s looking forward to seeing him play alongside Wirtz 
I don’t know where to put this, but this thread looks suitable.
We are having a pretty disappointing season. Think it’s due to two reasons:
- Our veterans and key players are very exhausted.
- Our new recruits still haven’t adapted to our system.
Both can and will be sorted. Be a believer. YNWA
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But that would mean passing backwards and sideways, also teams don’t have to come out as they are already 1 up 
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There were some pieces written around the period in the spring before we’d quite officially got over the line highlighting a sudden drop in our defensive competitiveness. That perspective is looking really prescient about now and raises the question of what we were doing in the summer going for two short arse FBs and a focus on a CB who is barely 6 feet. The issues were facing here dealing with the directness of everyone’s play is less about compactness and more about individually players just not doing well enough in their battles on the first ball or the second. I get the perspective that being more compact means there are more bodies around the ball when it drops but this feels like a shirt cut that doesnt address the actual failing. Even a high pressing team should be able to deal with the second balls against a team that has gone long and put it in a space behind us because if the opposition has run up field far enough to pick up that ball himself then there was nothing to press further up field that would prevent you competing for that second ball.
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This is a massive, mentality, that is what is missing, it’s as though they have lost the belief in themselves, erring rather doing.
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It’s not the lack of response but the lack of a solution that works and is sustainable to the point of regaining consistency.
If you look at the Man U game, we won nearly all the 1st balls from their keeper kicking long, they weren’t really challenging for them, just looking to pick up the 2nd ball and when they did there were holes.
I look at their 1st goal, where Virg follows Mbeumo and goes into Macca, leaving a gap behind, why follow Mbeumo as Macca is already in that position and all Mbeumo is going to do is flick it on if he wins it and then Virg is in position to pick up the flick on.
As that game wore on we had them pegged back so deep and pressured them that they couldn’t get up to compete for the 2nd ball.
Brentford was very interesting as lot of their longer balls were looping high balls which are very hard to get good distance on when heading the ball.
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And certain posters have appeared out of the woodwork
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Why is our CB trying to win a long high ball pumped into his area and why not leave it to the 5’7 playmaker to win it? The better question is why didnt get out of the way and prepare himself to receive/pick up the ball that Virgil was quite obviously going to win?
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You could look at the other side if Virg leaves it to Macca, then we are in better position to deal with anything that happens, all Mbeumo could do if he wins it is flick it on and who is in that space Virg.
By going into the area he did, 2 of our players were then out of the game.
How does Macca get out of the way if Virg doesn’t shout early enough, I am sure if he had the chance and heard the shout he would have got out of the way.
Great post, one other thing that I think also matters to footballers is meritocracy.
Players know if someone is playing poorly and still starting when another that has shown willingness and ability to perform when used is sat on the bench.
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Where are the other people involved/responsible? What are their thoughts on the current situation, their perspective? Am I the only one who’d love to hear something from them and not just the ‘head coach’?
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I wanna hear from John Henry.
£450m for this slop.
Crikey…
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Rodgers’s biggest flaw - one which we’ve seen repeat itself - is his massive ego and his belief that everything was about him. Slot doesn’t come off that way. He seems to be the kind of manager who’s willing to admit his mistakes and correct them.
The issue here is that it appears that Slot is lost as to how to solve these issues. Seems to me that his master plan isn’t coming together like he’d hoped, and he’s struggling to find the right pivot to Plan B/C/D etc.
That’s where I’m worried. Once you hear a manager talking about how they don’t know how to solve a problem, you have to either hope that he finds one quickly or you just start looking for someone else who may have that solution.
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Absolutely. We’ve become so used to that side of the club working well that it’s maybe hard to acknowledge he may have played his role in this as well.
Slot didn’t say that he doesn’t know how to solve the problem. He said that they haven’t found the answer yet.
As hard as it is to watch or to follow as a Liverpool fan, there’s nothing else for him to do or say than to keep working…
Unless you want him to be one of those who hides behind manager speak.
It’s all good being the mythical genius creatures pulling all the strings in the shadows when it’s going well. Quickly gets a touch of letting middle managment hang out to dry publicly when it doesn’t. Bit of an exaggeration, I know, but you get my point.