Arne Slot - Head Coach

I would have a lot more sympathy with that argument if these struggles were happening last season, but he dealt with those pressure fine when they were biggest. He is now firmly in the position of this being his team and we ran into a historically bad run of form that has been sandwiched between two period of picking up results while looking incredibly unconvincing. We’re nearly 5 months into the season and we’ve got about 3 games we can point to that were satisfactory. I dont think dissatisfaction with that and doubt over his ability to get us out of it is a case of unfair expectations

7 Likes

That’s all it takes.

Scruffy piece of paper, 2 sets of goalposts, ‘HEAD BALL TOWARDS GOAL’ scrawled on the goal we’re attacking and ‘HEAD BALL AWAY FROM GOAL’ scrawled on the goal we’re defending.

Sorted.

6 Likes

Slot: We never get a penalty

Liverpool boss Arne Slot speaking to Sky Sports:

"There was an obvious moment in the first half where we didn’t go to the floor, which I understand because every time we go to the floor we never get a penalty.

He is starting to resemble the Arteta of previous years, when it was always the referee’s fault, the injuries, the uncooperative opponent, the players who didn’t perform well, the ball, the pitch, but never, ever his own fault.

5 Likes

I always liked Billy Connolly’s quotes about Scottish football. He said that Ally MacLeod thought that tactics were a new kind of mint.

12 Likes

Next the grass will be the wrong colour.
Good job most EPL pitches have grass these days or I’m sure he’d already have started. :blush:

4 Likes

I remember Anfield in the 1970s. It usually was at this time of year.

3 Likes

He isn’t wrong on this to be fair

8 Likes

Fucking hell any other manager at any other point and you’d be agreeing with him.

3 Likes

Slot is right, and he is sticking up for the club in saying it.

But because the mind is already made up, at least for some, then it is taken as evidence that he is complaining, and overlooking his own shortcomings.

That’s the problem. When the mind is made up, there’s nothing Slot can do that will suffice.

4 Likes

He was saying the same ting about Ryan’s suspension for the first game of the season and I recall that not sitting well with a lot of people and this was long before the knives had started coming out for him.

I think it’s one thing to point out mischievous things players at other clubs do, with an insinuation that we dont do the same thing. It’s another to just come out and say we’re more honest than everyone else and rhetorically put your side on a pedestal like this, which is something that surely invites a negative reaction.

1 Like

Obviously I have no idea if this is true, but, if it is it’s very damning of Hughes et al. that they have massively misunderstood how important set pieces have become. I have some sympathy (we were fucking league champions) but also it was clear last season that LegoMan was using them successfully and it was always plausible (and likely there were noises heard by those very connected in the game) that other clubs would follow suit.

With the incomplete information we have its reasonable we’ll land on different preferred ideas for what most likely happened, but I dont see anything at all in the situation that suggests we under appreciated the importance of a set piece guy. If anything the story shows the opposite - we had a guy who was filling two roles and we hired someone to take some of his responsibilities from him so he could focus full time on the set pieces. Obviously its gone poorly, but that doesn’t always mean the process was bad, and there are plenty of ways you can land at deciding your best option is an internal candidate and back fill their original role

2 Likes

But we weren’t strong at set pieces last season either. The idea we’d double down on our ‘set pieces coach’ has obviously been horrendous but in retrospect looks like a miscalculation on how important these were becoming. I hope, when it comes to player recruitment, we are not also making similar mistakes and under valuing aerial prowess - at present we are incredibly reliant on Virg.

What has this style of football won last season, it will likely win the league this season but it’s not being replicated elsewhere and it will probably fall short in the CL.

2 Likes

What I didn’t understand about Slot’s post game interview was when he said he didn’t think the Ekitike judo incident was a penalty because he didn’t go down. That’s an incorrect reading of the rules. You don’t need to hit the deck for a foul to be awarded. How many times have you seen a player get grabbed from behind by a desperate opponent and pull up with just a frustrated look to the ref who immediately gives the foul? What’s so different about it being in the penalty area? A foul is a foul and that makes it a penalty. The fault here was with that bottler Kavanagh and the useless lino who both watched the entire thing up close and just ignored it because they expect the player to go down.
Just because Hugo didn’t go down doesn’t mean he wasn’t prevented from going on the score. Slot says we are an honest team and he wonlt ask players to dive but I think Hugo will have a very different attitude next time.

That was Slot’s point. He didnt say he didnt think it was a penalty. He pointed out that if refs dont give pens in that sort of situation players will be forced to throw themselves on the floor in search of one.

3 Likes

Probably the only area where I would agree with Slot 100%. He’s more vocal on these things than Klopp ever was.

7 Likes

Just a couple of matches back, there were some complaining that the club is not vocal enough about the bias against the club. Now Slot is voicing out, he is too whiny? At some point of time, these critics of Slot have become a farce. They will use anything and everything to criticise Slot and dilute any sort of credibility on their critique.

7 Likes

again. as always.

the people who criticised the club for not calling out certain issues are not the same ones now complaining, and people have different opinions on these matters.

to the left of any post is a users name, perhaps an avatar or a letter indicating their initials.

where there is a different user name, it indicates it is a different person, possibly with a different opinion.

i think this is where you maybe getting unstuck

this forum is a pretty cool place, but blanket blaming everyone for every opinion it really detracts from the conversation.

cheers and hope you take this in the spirit it is meant.

9 Likes

Was going to post something similar. As we know, each formanite has their own perspectives, biases, interests and skills: some of us sell our art (horse oeuvre trending at sothebys?) for big bucks, others of us provide comedic, intellectual or kind friendly vibes and others are five star fuckwits. It would a mistake to assume any kind of hive mind on any potentially polarising issue like the patience the club should show to a manager who won us only our second league title in 35 years just last season.

1 Like