Learned a new word
That’s really fucking sad from you. Do you want a discussion, or do you just want to fling shit about?
Where have I said that this isn’t important? Where have I suggested conditioning doesn’t matter? How about you stop throwing strawmen about?
What I have disputed is your assertion that Liverpool are not preparing properly for games of football, on the basis - and this is the only cast iron objectively true thing in this back and forth between us - you haven’t got a fucking dickie bird what is going on at Kirkby, and you don’t have the knowledge or data to back that up as an assertion. How these players are conditioned and prepared for games of football to the detail you are touching on, is not in the public domain.
What we do know is that Liverpool are a multi billion pound professional sports club, operating at the elite of the game. The manager arrived with a reputation for fitness and conditioning, and we won the league last season looking fitter and stronger than every other team. The idea that these people, who operate at a level few of us could even contemplate, have suddenly forgotten how to prepare us for games is absolutely risible.
You are entitled to think these players are not being prepared properly for matches, but it’s clearly an opinion rather than a fact, and not a particularly credible one.
I don’t mind the critique. I don’t mind the discussion. I don’t like the way arguments like yours are framed as something we know to be self- evident. I don’t like how opinions become so entrenched conversations are no longer possible
The opening goals for us in the last 2 league games were unforced errors from the opposition and fortuitous bounce of the ball.
In the brighton match, Minteh was defending his corner, Gomez went charging in on Brighton’s LW, the ball bounced nicely on the ground twice towards the gap between their 2 CBs and then to Ekiteke.
In the spurs match, after going down by 1 man, Romero goes too short in diagonal and hits our player, allowing Isak to get the ball.
This looks eerily like the start of this season with all those special moments again…
Almost half way through the season and Arne is still no closer to finding a way to get this side playing quality, attractive football. The football isn’t bad, it’s deplorable. And it’s every fucking week. How is a game between Fulham and Burnley producing more excitement than anything we’ve conjured up this season? With a bit of luck here and there, we’re essentially winging it. No idea how we sit joint 4th, then again the football in this league (& I include the team currently sitting top) is utterly dreadful, possibly the worst it’s ever been. The soul of the game has been taken away and replaced with AI.
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I’d argue most goals are down to errors. That was the basis of Klopp’s tactics, and even Mourinho’s more extreme version for that matter. Still fair to argue we got away with it a fair bit yesterday.
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I am pretty sure he mentioned his family moving over this summer. My concern a few months ago was he couldn’t get wins.
Any replacement now is pointless the quality isn’t out there until post WC.
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The keyword being educated…
I think you are answering your own question there.
I think one of the things that has happened in the last 12 months, is that the game has gone in a direction that the club didn’t anticipate.
Slot spent ages going on and on about PSG, and that seems to the the blueprint for what he wanted out of the summer, but when Spurs of all teams are launching long throws into the box, then something has definitely happened to football.
It is shite, though. I agree with that. The quality of football on display has nosedived.
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We did lose control near the end of the game last night and that was disappointing. However, it’s something that is not solely down to Slot. It’s also the players who have to manage the situation better.
I also thought (or hoped) Chiesa would come on before Frimpong (nothing against him, that was my opinion before he came on).
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If true, that could be another red flag when reviewing Arne and staff’s performance this year.
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And Hughes as well.
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Yet what’s it won?
Spurs didn’t play like that in the final of the Europa, Paris don’t play like that, we won the title, Chelsea didn’t win it playing like that.
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To whom it may concern: TAN won’t stand for people being bullied here, so I’ve deleted a bunch of rather silly posts and those made in reaction to them.
It’s a matter of circumstance that a long-time poster is about the only one on these boards fighting Slot’s corner - whether his opinion is right or wrong is another matter but hurling insults or passive-aggressive digs at him isn’t the way of this forum. If you want a debate, debate away in a civil manner. If not, just ignore each other and get on with it. Thank you.
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I’m still fighting Slot’s corner too!
Obviously there are legitimate concerns, and if he doesn’t sort it out he will be gone. But I think he will get the season, so long as we are in touch with the CL spots, then next summer he will be gone if things don’t improve, or he will continue on if they do.
I’m adopting a wait and see approach. Last year’s Premier League title put a lot of credit in the bank. It is depleting, but for me, Slot should still be in post.
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The difference here is the type of errors. Were they forced errors or unforced errors.
Klopp’s tactics is a super high block with the team pressing high on the opposition GK and CBs at their half, forcing them to make a fast decision, thereby forcing errors.. Should the opposition wins possession especially in his own half,his team will swarm the fuck out of opposition player in possession. That creates forced errors as well.
Slot’s first season reduced the number of minutes of this kind of high intensity football, opting for control over 90 mins of relentless pressing, allowing the team to rest when the opposition don’t look dangerous. With a 4-2-4 OOP, the front 4 went in as a line, ignoring the GK while pressing on the opposition defenders and get them cornered at the bylines, instead of using men to press the opposition including the GK.
This season, we haven’t really seen any sort of coherent press at all. We now stand off them, hoping to maintain the shape to not concede and we still concede somehow from set-pieces. Right now, we got our lucky bounce back with unforced errors from the opposition…
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Thats Mourinho 101. If we don’t have the ball we cant make a mistake.
Given our recent run I can understand being reserved about things. Things are obviously far from perfect but if we keep winning ugly I’m nervously ok with it. Nervous because you can only do that for so long. But maybe in the interim we get better. The football in the PL maybe shit, but it is very unforgiving. You get zero time to adjust and adapt.
Thats where I think we’re at.
This is a cherry picked analysis. Even if you can excuse missing a fundamental trend that is underway that negates what you want from your team, how does that trend explain us not being able to keep possession against a side playing with 9 players? More generally though, the athleticism (and the way it was allied to the technique and sophistication of their game plan) was a core part of what Slot loved about the way PSG played and so there is nothing about moving closer to how they play that should leave us as vulnerable to some of the trends we’ve seen in the league this season as has happened. Especially when you see how badly we replicate what PSG do with and without the ball in those moments when it’s on the floor.
We have tried to implement a change in how we play and its not gone well. Is it that the message coming through to them is not clear? Is it that they understand the new ask but the patterns are being drilled in training in an ineffective way? Shit, is it possible that it’s just an overall bad idea and the players are doing everything being asked of them and it’s just producing bad outcomes? We wont know that level of detail, but what is pretty apparent is the lack of confidence we are seeing in the players is secondary to whatever break down there has been in implementing that evolved approach. Our patterns of play are shit. Players are constantly showing that they expect or need something different from a team mate than they are seeing (see Sweeting’s comment at half time yesterday about one notable breakdown when we finally tried pressing in their half) and so we are seeing players who look like they feel they have not been set up to succeed and that is where the drop in confidence has come from.
As I said in the game thread, you can understand why we were so jittery late on against Spurs given the way the season has gone, but our complete lack of any sort of recognizable pattern of play to help us through those jitters is in itself a pretty strong alarm bell that explains the failures of the Slotball evolution. It is also a far simpler explanation and straighter line explanation to the loss of confidence we’re seeing than trying to position the loss of confidence, as a spontaneous thing affecting a wide range of serial winners at the same time unrelated to how well Slot is setting them up
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Could the precedent have been set post-PSG tie? I can’t quite put my finger on it but, in hindsight, it feels now that was the period when the standards were allowed to slip and when Slot lost his authority over this group. I fully agree, it seems that we lack leadership among players (Van Dijk is more a captain who leads by example but you definitely need Henderson and Milner to push the guys to get their act together) but I think this team lacks the authority of the coach, which has to be higher than that of any player.
Maybe it’s Slot’s personality, maybe it’s the (senior) players thinking they’ve done it all now - but if he can’t get his lads to keep the ball against a wildly inconsistent Tottenham side that is two players down, the issues are very serious.
Even in Rafa’s final season, with all the rumours about Carra undermining his authority, every player bar Riera looked as though he would run through a wall for him, let alone exact his tactical plans. Current players (bar Salah) are saying all the best things about Slot but the midfield still gets bypassed easily and we’re still conceding from set-pieces at an alarming rate. If these two things in particular keep repeating game after game, regardless of who is playing and what system is employed, I’d point the finger at the coach.
After we had won at Stoke at the opening of 2015/16 and against Frankfurt earlier this season, I said the same thing: Rodgers/Slot wouldn’t be in charge at the start of the next season because I felt both had betrayed the principles that got them the Liverpool job in the first place. This run of “form” as of late reminds me more of Rodgers’ Liverpool run in mid-2014/15 that was halted by Man United at Anfield - I feel we’ll suffer the same kind of comedown because all of this feels rather unsustainable, regardless of injuries.
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Aye. There is a lot about Slot I like and despite all my various criticisms this year I do want him to pull out of this and make it work. But my concern with this period is what comes next. Slot knows this is not good enough for him to meet his objectives and keep his job so the stabilizers will have to come off sooner or later. And we are then in the Houllier tries to play expansive front foot football period that unravelled his time with us
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There definitely seems to be an agenda going on here. People going on about how poor we were the last 20 minutes or whatever. It’s a good thing football is a 90 minute game.
People certainly seem to have made up their mind on Slot. He seems to be suffering from the fact he’s not as charismatic as Jurgen Klopp. Fuck me who is?
I wonder what people would have thought to Bob Paisley following Bill shankly if the mentality of today existed in the 70s.
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