I’m frustrated more than anything. It’s a concern that it was the Klopp/Slot hybrid that was the ideal and that Slot has now coached too much of the Klopp out of the team.
I’m also unconvinced by the quality of his support team.
But I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt as I think the recruitment team dropped the ball and left him with a difficult squad to manage.
I don’t mean that in terms of personalities as such, more about depth of quality in certain areas.
Technically it is more than an option. We also pre agreed a contract with Quansah. We only do that if we see it as more of a ‘see you later’ than a ‘goodbye’.
Because that’s what the form table on the BBC shows and that’s what I was looking at. And the last six is no weirder a benchmark than 5 or 10.
It will still be subject to negotiation, we’ll see if we look to bring him back or not next summer.
The other weird part is you focused only on the top 6 where 4th place and 10th place are just 4 points apart and 6th place is just 2 points ahead of 10th place.
If we zoom out to just the top half of the table (position 1 - 10) , LFC actually got 4th highest points in the points tally in the top 10 in the last 6 games tied with AV points wise but ahead of AV virtue of lesser losses.
To avoid the cherry picking of stats argument, let us zoom out to the whole league . We actually get bumped down to 5th spot based on form.
I understand you rate Slot a lot but you gotta be more objective in assessing the actual perfomance of the team vis a vis the whole league rather than the top 6
None of it is weird. The BBC shows the last six results in their form section and the conversation was about a fight between us, United, Chelsea and Newcastle.
So yes, I picked stats relevant to the actual conversation being had and no, I don’t need to “zoom out” to include the form of West Ham, Bournemouth and Palace because it’s irrelevant to the discussion being had. It’s almost as if you’ve chosen to pointlessly expand the parameters to try and make a point.
I also expressly said that I was in no way saying that meant we were good. Really really clearly made that point. And yet you say I need to be more objective. I don’t know how more objective you get than saying “we’re not that different from these other teams being discussed but that doesn’t mean we’re good”. Perhaps you have a different definition of objective that means “be negative at all costs.”
I know you’re live to be as negative as possible but perhaps you should take some time to read the conversations before you jump in with yet more of your desperate moaning.
I had a day off from posting yesterday because I couldn’t be arsed with this place, the football in general, and everything about Liverpool.
It was as frustrated as I’ve been watching the team this season, because we should have been over the hill and faraway by half time. I mean like three or four up. We played really well, best I’ve seen us for ages. But through a combination of our own lack of killer instinct, conservatism, and sheer bad luck, Burnley remain in the game - and they know these chumps will gift them something.
Second half reversion to type, and I think deep down we all knew what was coming as soon as Burnley got their tails up and started probing.
Where this falls on Arne I don’t know. It will take a lot for me to call for a manager to be replaced because I’m aware of my own limitations. I don’t know enough about elite football management to start throwing my weight around, anymore than I think I know better than a heart surgeon what they should be doing. No, no - go in through the left ventricle, you cunt!.
But it is really concerning that I don’t see how we get out of this. I think Arne looks increasingly lost, like someone battling from week to week to keep their head above water.
The biggest issue we’ve now got is that we are a team that is scared to attack, scared to exert our superiority and put teams to the sword, because obviously doing so exposes you a little. You can’t throw a punch without dropping your guard - we are terrified of dropping our guard.
So while Slot deserves some credit for arresting the run of defeats, the PSV/Forest/City horror shows really feel like a long time ago now. Saturdays game should really have been the point where we drew a line under that ‘stop the bleed’ spell and started throwing punches again. They are the worst team in the league and at time they should have been discussing how to limit the damage rather than plotting a route back into the game.
I don’t want to see a lad built like a Steven Gerrard regen receive the ball on the halfway line with two or three passing options ahead of him, put his foot on the ball, put his hands up to tell everyone to calm down, and then play it back to a centre back. And I don’t want to see Slot fucking clapping him for doing so.
We’re at the point now where the cure is doing us more damage than the disease, and somehow Slot has to find a way to balance a tighter defensive mindset with the desire to be adventurous when the opportunity arises. This doesn’t mean trying to force it, and I really don’t mind them holding the ball when there is nothing on. But the opposition will give chances, and we have to start gambling more in those moments.
There was a point made on the Anfield Wrap yesterday that managers tend to have an ethos they fall back to when things are tough. If Arsenal had had the run we’d had, Arteta would have them all defending the edge of the box in two backs of four. Klopp’s happy place in a bad spell was get everyone closer together and up the intensity of pressing, Guardiola (and Slot is cut from this cloth) would go back to the idea of control.
But there comes a point where you have to build back out again and allow a little risk back into the game. It should be happening by now, but Slot still seems to be prioritising safety first. That suggests he is a bit stuck and having tightened us up he doesn’t know how to allow more attacking freedom in moments without the defensive side falling to shit again.
Hodgson doesn’t have a Premier League trophy though does he.
Roy Hodgson at no point has won a Premier league title or averaged above 1.25pts did he? And he still got till January before he got sacked. Slot still has a few months on that as he was averaging 3 points up to Palace. He’s currently averaging 1.63pts. Its dismal and I haven’t changed my view that he probably has to go in the summer but lets stick to the facts and not pick and choose what we like.
This safety first approach is definitely losing us the 12th man on the pitch, during the 90min, and definitely after it. Once the fans turn, it doesn’t matter how much progress we claw back, fans will still have memories of this scenario of ‘surrender’ we are witnessing every time the opposition takes us on with purpose.
Best thing Slot can do, is send us out to steamroller these low-block teams… He has got nothing else to lose, except his job if he doesn’t..!
Of all games this season, Burnley is one of after which I can’t really fault the team for it’s performance during most of the game. We saw some good attacking actions, exciting individual displays, that isn’t enough?
Fans also have to up their game, they all need to push in order to finish where we want. If not, there are other clubs, who are perhaps coming from a worse position (and makes them extra motivated), who are breathing down our necks…
Yes we have tightened things up with this more conservative approach with the ball, but we are still so frequently cut open. Imagine a team that is a mix of Jose and Klopp, but only the bad bits…the conservatism with the ball of a Jose team who thinks he can score enough goals by just getting the ball to Hazard and letting him cook, with the off the ball vulnerabilities of a bad Klopp side.
Yeah, you are totally right, however I think it’s a situational thing that comes from our inability to kill games off, combined with our tendency to continually offer encouragement to teams so they always feels there is something to get from us.
Then mixed in with this there are the squad issues, that mean Slot doesn’t feel he can replaced quality with quality, so is leaving players on longer, and we know tired players make mistakes.
In the first half I didn’t think Burnley laid a glove on us, and we should have been 3 up at least. I did not see much evidence of being cut open in that 45mins. It was a joke how one sided it was.
It’s in the second half that Burney - having achieved their objective of staying in the game - start probing, and it’s at that point where we (understandably given how many times we’ve seen it) start think ‘oh fuck - it’s coming!’ It’s almost a self fulfilling prophesy at this point.
My biggest frustration is how we’ve gone from the fittest team in PL to the least fit. So many look gassed from midway through second half, and have done from early in the season.
Obviously we had a tragedy disrupt preseason. Can it all be put down to that, or have standards dropped? It’s interesting seeing interviews from ex-players saying they had never experienced intense training like under Klopp. Was brutal but towards the end of games they always felt they had more in the tank than opposition
There were periods under Klopp where the team looked gassed.
Which was understandable. Intense games twice a week with pressure to get over 90 points in the league. Geggenpress. Injury crises.
What’s the reason for being gassed currently when they are playing such slow-paced football
Agreed, it is rotation, including subs that helps the fitness side and at the moment we aren’t getting this either from the subs coming on or Arne’s lack of substitutions.
I think our forwards looked gassed at times, as when they do try and press they end up doing doggies (chasing the ball) as the rest of the team aren’t backing up the initial press and it looks unorganised and uncoordinated.
It wouldn’t need to be standards, just priorities and different perspectives about the best way to prepare a group to get through a season. When you have a competitive schedule like this, if you inherit a team of physically fit players you can get away with an approach that physically under cooks them for quite a while before it starts to show, but we did see performances from the spring on last season that were consistent with that, with this season just a continuation.
And of course with the number of new players we have this year if there is an issue with the focus and balance of the training then maybe it takes them a bit longer to get up to speed with the physical demands of the Prem.
