Arne Slot - Head Coach

[Nikola]

@Limiescouse

Aye. There is a lot about Slot I like and despite all my various criticisms this year I dont want it to 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.

I would like to make one thing clear - I genuinely want Slot to turn things around and show he can be the best coach in the world and win many trophies with Liverpool. After all, he was instrumental in getting us that title last season, without a shadow of doubt. Getting the tactics right, resolving his errors quickly and learning from them, absolutely bossing his media appearances.

Are there mitigating circumstances for him? Yes, there are. Are things getting better for him in terms of building a recognisable brand of attacking football and winner’s mentality? No, they are not. There’s a huge part of me that thinks that, even if he was winning the title, playing whatever it is we’re playing now, he’d still get the sack come the end of the season.

@deno666

He seems to be suffering from the fact he’s not as charismatic as Jurgen Klopp.

He is but I’d be surprised if that was the reason why people would want him gone. With Klopp, even at his lowest point (which, for me, is the first half of 2022/23), you’d know what kind of football the team was trying to play. With Slot, it’s been a while since I could tell you anything about it and that’s the most damning verdict of the current state of on-the-pitch affairs at our club.

[Limiescouse]

@deno666

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.

We were playing against a side with 9 players and kept the ball about as well as the game 2 years ago when we were the side with 9 players. It was absolutely awful, even more so from a side that has been put together to ensure we maintain “control” of games. That is not the result of an agenda to call that out.

[deno666]

Except it’s not 2 hours door to door is it. From leavin their house in Holland to knocking on the door at wherever slot lives is going to be at least 4 hours door to door. That’s a fucking pain in the arse commute to be doing regularly.

[RedArmada]

@deno666

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.

Have you missed the last 10 months? Not as charismatic as Klopp? If only that was the problem.

I doubt that even his fiercest critics here and out in the real world want to see him fail, but that’s what he’s doing, whether you want to acknowledge it or not.

[deno666]

Yeah shit happens. We still won though. If we’d been that shit the first 20 minutes would people be harping on about it?

It makes me laugh that many of the people criticising slot are the same ones who saw no wrong with benitez who’s football at times was fucking dog shit.

[ILLOK]

15 years in the making. Nice post.

[deno666]

You mean the last 10 months when we won the league? No I didn’t miss that. I remember that well quite well. In fact it was only 8 months ago.

[Sportbilly1966]

However, it’s not just the last 20 minutes, it was the slow laborious football we played before that, also, as several of what I call the most level headed posters have said, there doesn’t seem to be a pattern in what we are trying to do offensively.

It seems to me, we or our coach have a fear of what the opposition is doing and are setting up to stop them rather than having them worry about us.

I thought that the last season under Jurgen we were too open and could hurt by teams playing on the break, Arne initially stopped that and we were solid in transition. This season we morphed back to what we were seeing in Jurgen’s last season, easy to transition against but without the high energy and pressing shape up top.

Our build up for many is too slow and the opposition has time to set and then, obviously become harder to play through. It also seems like the players don’t enjoy it, watch the frustration shown from Macca several times against Spurs. We start with lots of player movement from the front players but that seems to peter out as we play it slowly around the back in that turgid horseshoe shape.

It isn’t all bad we do at times play some exceptional football centrally, when we decide to play a vertically and some players do have the key to unlock the opposition.

Slots tactics aren’t helping but he can’t help the individual errors that are costing us and some of them not looking like they have the fitness for 90 minutes. The players do need to take some responsibility especially in how to calm a game down and control the tempo.

I would like Arne to succeed, but he has to do something with how slow we are in possession and somehow do something for our mental fragility and get a coherent message for our shape and individual responsibilities when defending, we were like headless chickens against 9 & 10 men Spurs.

Their has been signs of improvement, then as for yesterday we took 2 steps back.

The good news is we won and are unbeaten, in 6, just need to see more on the pitch and a style that makes the most of the players we have … that are fit.

[Limiescouse]

@deno666

Yeah shit happens. We still won though. If we’d been that shit the first 20 minutes would people be harping on about it?

We were poor throughout though, showing only flashes of coherence with the ball even before they went down to 9 players. That by itself was enough to be critical of, but the lack of anything even resembling an established pattern of play once they went down to 9 is the real flashing red light that things are not well here.

This was a side that was put together so that once we went 2-0 our opposition even with 11 players would not touch the ball again. Over half way through the season, and nearly 12 months into that evolution we are unable to come close to that even against a side with 9 players who are themselves not playing well.

[RedOverTheWater]

Just want to say even though I’m still supportive of Slot, everyone is making a fair comment about the lack of style or identity. What sort of team are we? What are we trying to do?

In addition to getting the results we need, Slot needs to find a style and execute on it. If not, I could see a situation where we finished say 4th, largely because of having enough quality moments to get enough points… but if the template for the pattern of play isn’t established, that might not even be enough to save Slot, especially if there’s a fella like Alonso who might be available.

Still, that sort of decision is in the future for me, as there is a lot of football to be played, so I’m adopting a wait and see policy.

Definitely not trolling, as someone accused me of yesterday. Ugh. We can all see we’re not in a good way, but let’s at least be good to each other, especially if we have different perspectives.

[Sportbilly1966]

You have always been positive and please keep being the person you are and anyone accusing you of a troll, should be on your ignore list as you are the furthest poster on here I would call a troll!

[Bonus]

Look at us all…

we won yesterday and we’re still at each others throats!

dread to think what it would be like in here if we lost…

[mattyhurst]

It’s got quite tiresome, any moaning response is getting short shrift.

[Hope.in.your.heart]

Strange, we are unbeaten in six games, have just taken three points from Tottenham, and yet, people are getting their knickers in a twist about Slot.

The constant injuries are really hurting us, but regardless of that, we get the results. What’s not to like about that?

[RedRebel]

I thought we were okay apart from the last 15 minutes.

Christmas is always a messy time of year where you need to grind out wins regardless of performance.

I understand this season has been fairly shite so far, I think the build up of games and lack of proper training combined with a high turn over of players is not helping. I think this is zapping our boys confidence just like the fans confident at the moment. Few more wins like this and with the league so competitive we will be pushing for top 4, confidence will build once again.

Isak seems to have no luck at the moment, loved his movement and finish for the goal and could have been the start of a run of games/form for him.

[sgs]

I think you mean the PL rather than global football.
Few weeks ago I watched Elche, whose budget is a fraction of Sunderlands, give Madrid a footballing lesson.
Even with the direction of the current PL I think we’re all agreed that we should be doing much better.
Personally I haven’t given up on the league yet

[GermanRed]

We had the biggest results crisis in years since the end of September and Slot survived it.

With the quality we have I doubt we will miss out on CL (5th in the League) - even with the shit football we’ve been playing all year.

The owners will never sack a head coach for the shit football as long as he secures the CL money.

[Wilkored08]

I just wish we played with a bit more continuity…

[Nikola]

@GermanRed

The owners will never sack a head coach for the shit football as long as he secures the CL money.

We haven’t been there since FSG bought the club, have we? We either qualified for CL having played really good football or missed out altogether.

It’s a long way to go to secure that CL qualification. You know what else is long? Our list of absences. Isak and Leoni out for the season, Gomez and Bradley are always injured, Gakpo is either injured or completely out of form, Endo is injured and out of favour, Salah is out on AFCON.

[Zoran]

And where are Bajcetic and Danns?