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
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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.
Also put this in the Burnley post match.
Just watching redmentv originals on YT, good watch for me, especially with the balanced views on the Burnley game.
https://www.youtube.com/live/4j24PgfEoto?si=Pg9z0fHx-q4V1fof
One of the the things that came up is that teams don’t fear us!
Why do they feel confident to push forward and to commit players more, especially as games go on?
Fitness or lack of is one reason, but for me it is our lack of pace in our front players and the ability to break at pace and the way we defend.
In our pomp we had Mo, Sadio, Diaz and even Darwin, who would probably run offside, leading the break, then we had Bobby to pick a pass or lay one on a plate, Hendo, Gini with great engines to also get involved and lets not forget Trent who could with one pass open up a team when they get too adventurous.
Now teams don’t fear over committing against us, I can’t actually remember the last breakaway goal we scored?
Our pacy players are Frimpong, Ekitike and Szob, Isak would be in there if he was fit, however, with dropping deeper and being passive in the way we defend, we very rarely have the opportunity to break, we did have one against Burnley, where Flo woefully underhit his pass to Szob, who otherwise would have been through on goal.
We need to have a mindset change in the way we play and need to stop being passive defensively and need to be pro active in winning the ball and then when it’s on we need to commit to trying to hit the opposition early and hard to make them fear us.
This mindset change needs and this comes from Arne, we need to get back to when teams feared getting a corner and then being worried about us scoring, from their corner or from us winning possession and countering with pace and purpose.
For some reason this comment instantly brought
“You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off” to mind 
.
I think your post is pretty spot on. I’m sure some one of our players - I think it was Curtis - referred to Slot wanting to play the percentages, what I mean is basically Risk v Reward. Unfortunately, when confidence is low, you play the safer option. I get it, especially at home when there is more pressure on them.
As you said, we should have won against Burnley but when your missing pens and when your inform and confident striker (this is not a slight on Ekitike) is Mm’s away from adjusting his feet to prod home from a couple of yrds, you kind of know it’s not your day.
It is frustrating really as I am seeing things starting to progress. Wirtz is finding his groove but players are still not reading his game. There was a moment in one of our recent games where Wirtz was in the area, dragged the full back in enough to lay the ball for an on coming Kerkez on the overlap. Kerkez never read it though and it went out for a goal kick, no ones fault just not understanding each others game.
I am looking forward to Mo coming back, I hope the break from the squad/being in a happier environment puts a spring in his step. Also the Virg to Salah diagonal is so good at putting us on the front foot, and usually one on one.
However, what ever happens we cannot start games with both Gapko and Salah as our wide men. Their style of play just makes us narrower and easy to close off.
Hopefully, the restarting of the Champs league and with it a different style of opponent gives us a chance to play without pressure and find our Mojo, on paper the home game to Qarabag looks ideal but we can’t count on it.
For information purposes/context.
This season after 22 games we have 36 points.
Last season we had 51, one more point than Arsenal have now.
After Klopp’s title winning campaign we were on 40 points after 22 games.
22/23 we had 33 points.
So in the 22/23 season, Klopps team had less points than at the same stage as this season. I don’t remember Klopp getting this much shit.
I personally think he is gone in the Summer - too much noise.
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This was one thing that actually annoyed me on Saturday, because leading up to the equaliser we played it around our own box under pressure. Surely in those circumstances, it makes sense to hoof it up field and allow the team to regain their shape. As it was, they fannied about with it until we lost possession and then remained on the back foot until they scored.
I think he did from some quarters, particularly after it went to bits in the season after the title win.
Possibly the difference is that we saw Klopp pulling it back together after a poor spell. So far with Slot, we have only seen him go from dreadful to mediocre.
I’m not a fan of ditching the head coach at the first sign of problems, because I think the position has to align with the whole football plan, from direction, through recruitment, and the entire coaching set-up.
There’s a lot of people wanting Alonso in immediately, but I can guarantee that many of them would be demanding his sacking by the summer if things didn’t go well.
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And the fact that the only CBs he had were Phillips and Williams.
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And the fact that he was probably part of the decision not to sign a CB in that summer of 2020 while selling Lovren and going into the season with 3 CB’s.
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The availability of Alonso really changes the situation, but nobody should be under any illusions that it’s a magic solution. Changing the manager/head coach is the easiest thing to do, but there are people above and below Slot in the chain of command who have questions to answer in relation to this season - people on and off the pitch who haven’t delivered.
The decision to sack a manager who has won the league shouldn’t be taken lightly. I would hope that Alonso would want the job, but there is no guarantee he would. And even though I would hope we’d be getting the exciting young coach who guided Leverkusen to an unbeaten season rather than the win who looked fucked by his experience of Madrid, there is no guarantee he would be any better.
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David Lynch on Arne Slot:
“They clearly, clearly want to get to the end of the season with Slot if they can. They don’t want to make a mid-season managerial change because who do you get as the interim? It would clearly be better to make the managerial change in the summer."
“I think his future’s already set, to be honest. It’s been so pronounced, the decline, for such a long time. It is only a case of getting to the summer, albeit if he starts to lose six, seven on the bounce again, he will get bulleted because they’ll feel forced to go for an interim. They don’t want to change; they really would prefer not to."
“Then it’s kind of go for a manager then in the summer. People are talking about ‘go and get Xabi Alonso’, but he’s not gonna want to walk into a job now, so it’d have to be an interim, and I don’t think there’s a great deal out there.”
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It does seem obvious that unless there’s a massive turnaround, Slot will be gone in a few months.
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I’m not sure that Lynch is demonstrating any particular insight here. We know FSG don’t usually pull the trigger on a manager until they feel they have to/ have everything else lined up.
Still depends on what the club see as the driving factors for these performances.
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Also David Lynch…
Absurdity is what I like most in life, and there’s humor in struggling in ignorance. If you saw a man repeatedly running into a wall until he was a bloody pulp, after a while it would make you laugh because it becomes absurd. But I don’t just find humor in unhappiness – I find it extremely heroic the way people forge on despite the despair they often feel.
Current LFC to a tee…
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The point was they weren’t. And I said they were. Regardless for the reasons why.
And they didn’t gegenpress that was used a bit when he first came in but they evolved over time.
Is the plodding a symptom though or the cause?
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absolutely nothing wrong with the team that faced Burnley.
its a cracking squad. we are short at CB, but thats only if we get an injury, Slot hasnt rotated out KOnate when he had a chance, and VVD and Konate are both playing everygame.
we look thin at the back, but thats us fearing an injury, you could say it hasnt impacted him yet.
at left fullback we are fine, right full back up until 2 games ago we were fine, and we now have JG and Frimpong there…
midfield is world class.
lack of depth on the wings might be an issue, but not against the likes of Burnley.
i dont buy into the incomplete squad line… its not perfect, but, its still more than more than good enough.
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i dont think anyone thinks its a magic solution.
im particularily worried that whoever does come in, or if Slot gets another at least one season, the impending retirement(at our club) of Salah, VVD, Robbo, Allison and leaving of the likes of Konate and Macca…
we could possibly see another summer like the last in terms of numbers (maybe not the dollar value)
we are in for at least another season of upheaval, if not next season, the one after it at the least.
we need a team with an identity…not a team that just wins games becuase we figured out how to put the current peices together…
all feels very very ominous.
I’d love to see how our decision makers imagined all this in offices on their white boards, before then working with it on pitches.
Because I still have no idea, only some guesses after seeing some first friendlies in pre-season, etc. But the picture is incomplete, a number of questions remain. Hopefully we solve some this season, some will remain going into next. Regardless who is in charge.
And yes, the result on the pitch hasn’t been great.
This squad should remain a CL one next season, but we’ll see, we’ll have to merit that. Football doesn’t care who’s coming from a better position and who had what sort of expectations not long ago.
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The problem with a managerial change this summer is that the World Cup is going to mean a shortened pre season for the majority of our squad, likely 3-4 weeks max. You could argue it would make more sense to get Alonso if possible asap so he has a sufficient amount of time to work with the entire squad.
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It seems the hierarchy never considered a collapse like this so they are all like rabbits in the headlights.
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