Arne Slot - Head Coach

Yeah. Why?

That has nothing to do with Slot losing the trust and respect of his players. That is a matter of players wanting to establish accountability among each other, without being seen as complaining to ‘the boss’

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No the same thing over and over again might mean that they need to work on some things to iron out the kinks.

Necessary repetition because their is no understanding or balance in the new tactics.

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While I understand that our performance has not been this great since March, I am not really of the opinion that Slot must go, Klopp must come back etc etc. Winning the league with an existing squad is not easy as well, although it may look in hindsight. Last season was supposed to be our transition season. It wasn’t. This season is. We should atleast give him some time to work this out. We have faced some injury issues as well. Ideally having Grav, Alisson might have helped as they have been the spine of Slot’s team last season. And it’s not just because he won the league, any manager deserves some time to implement his ideas.

Again I am worried myself I’ll not deny that. Things don’t look good. I can see there’s currently no style, no improvements, we look clueless with and without the ball and all.. just that it’s still a small period to be looking at manager change despite all that.

We probably went the Chelsea/ Utd way in spending on some players without strategy (assumption based on what we see today). I hope we don’t follow that with more of constant manager changes in short periods and then the cycle of managers wanting their own players and so on.

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Looking back I agree

Also, hasn’t he also managed teams that have had the amount or more turnover that we have just seen and coped well?

Is it the players that aren’t listening or putting the effort in?

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Hendo did the same and so have other captains

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Absolutely I can. He needs to take the plunge and dump Mo and get the forwards and FBs on Flos wavelength and then add CB cover/replacements in Jan but I absolutely can see him coming through this successfully. Losing another 4-5 games on the bounce would make it tricky though but I don’t see FSG dumping him

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Not true. You can know what a prolbem is, but have multiple solutions which all may, or may not work. You won’t know until you try each one weedig out the ones that prove useless.

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It’s such an obviously stupid thing to do , and it’s become laughably predictable.

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Sometimes it is not what the manager and coaches do/say, but about the players holding themselves and each other to account.

There was a great story from Sam Allardyce’s time at West Ham where, affter a particularly bad defeat (I think against Spurs), he called a team meeting, put on a video of the game from the day before then turned and walked out making the players watch the game without any backroom staff present so that the players could pick apart amongst themselves who was and was not pulling their weight and where the tactics were exposing weaknesses within the squad.

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Mate. You drive nails in with that thing?

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The thing I’m reminded of about him was early in his first season when he was doing a presser I think and was talking about sixes , eights , tens and nines and how they play , and was basically giving away tactical information. I found that very odd and just a little performative.

Anyway , he still gets a season for me , plus whatever he thinks he needs in January.

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None of us are happy with the situation and I have been critical of Slot’s tactics and certain players performances. However saying we are in crisis is imo going too far. We are scoring goals which means we are still in these games till the final whistle.
Most important imo is to stop conceding soft early goals so we are not chasing the game.
Score early goals to force the opposition to chase the game opening up space.
Accelerate the game when it’s on. Our plodding play just helps the bus parking systems.
Slow our opponents down. Pick their players up and make life difficult for them. We are really poor at this, we give opponents too much space then close them down in a ridiculous manner. Just get in their faces and force them to make the mistake. Buy time.
Sort out our set pieces.
Play a coherent system.
Communicate!

What I don’t understand is why Slot hasn’t already communicated this. It’s probably a case of over complicating things. It’s like when a player presses the rest don’t position for the press so it’s like we are operating 2 different systems, surely that’s simple to sort out, chose one or the other.

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My take on mr Slot is that he’ll turn it around as he’s clearly a very good manager. All this ‘he won the league with Klopp’s team’ isn’t totally baseless, but Klopp didn’t win it the year before with that team - so he clearly did something right with the players available. The other thing I like about him is that he consistently said last season that he was very lucky to walk into a great team and a great culture which was all down to Klopp. He was very humble and honest and won the league in his first season. Lots of credit in the bank.
Obviously he can’t keep loosing and keep his job though. I mean what if we loose another one or two or three games?? Then I think we’re in trouble and the owners may want to seriously think about it at that point.
Like many others, I am getting tired of him talking to much about our tactics etc. Also, he’s basically told every team in the league to just hoof it into our box every 10 seconds and you’ll win the game! The issue is not that by doing that every other manager will suddenly know how to play against us, they have eyes in their head and teams of people watching opponents analysing weaknesses, so that would happen anyway - I just think it’s creating a narrative in the media which puts the team under more pressure, erodes confidence and makes it harder to get out of the slump. If he had never mentioned it in the media then there probably wouldn’t be the same level of chatter about it.
He’s in a tricky spot, but if he can keep his trap shut about tactics and stop sounding like Wenger used to every time we loose, then he is more than good enough to get us on a roll again. The new players need time - Klopp himself has said that people will eat their words regarding Wirtz, I tend to think Jurgen knows what he’s talking about.
If everybody divorced their spouse at the very first sign of trouble it would be a very sad world.
I will support Slot until such time it becomes untenable - I think we’re a long way from that.

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Good points, well made. The manager and his players are all professionals and obviously don’t want to be in this current situation but they surely have the skills and experience to get through it.

I agree with a lot of what you are saying, but I’m just not sure Slot will see it as a solution as obvious as it may look. I can’t be 100% sure but I don’t think a back 3 has ever been something he’s used and historically it’s not associated with any period of success for Liverpool or anybody other than maybe Chelsea in the top tier of English football.

Ultimately, I think we can bemoan formations and certain players being in the team until the cows come home, but if you can’t do the absolute basics of defending right (winning your duels, being compact in midfield, defending the back post etc) then it doesn’t really matter what shape they line up in.

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It’s not a new thing. My only comment on it would be that I’m not sure Virgil is the right person to be leading it?

Spot on, realitically any formation is a fluid thing and comes down to the players working to make it successful

By moving our best midfielder to right back for a few minutes before putting him back in midfield?

There has been no improvement across this season so far, not even slightly.

It’s concerning how disjointed we look. Bournemouth have had more disruption to their side than we have and they’re playing like a team.

Solutions need to be found quickly or the season will be a write off.

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