I’ll wear it wirh honour!
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Strangely enough, it usually takes at least 6 months for a new boss to put his stamp on a team. Judge me at the end of the season sort of stuff.
Coincidentally (?), after his first 6 months we’ve just kept on getting worse.
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At this point what are the pros of keeping Slot until the end of the season?
Um… are you sure about that @gasband ?
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I don’t know what you mean
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Journalist Marcus Buckland has claimed to have heard from ‘a good source’ that Arne Slot will leave Liverpool at the end of this season.
Speaking on The Tottenham Way podcast in relation to the 44-year-old’s links with the Spurs job, Buckland hinted that Slot’s days at Liverpool may already be numbered, irrespective of what happens between now and the end of May.
The Amazon Prime Video reporter said:
“I hear, a good source tells me that Arne Slot going to leave Liverpool at the end of the season, whatever happens, so Xabi Alonso is going to sit.”
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sit … as in sit tight ?
Because Slot is basically the JJ Abrams of football.
Every single movie directed by JJ looks good at the beginning only to turn into shit in the end.
It would would take a brave poster to call for Slots head for playing shit football if we were ten points clear.
But the idea of shit football v winning is interesting, as I’m increasingly unsure whether it’s possible to win this premier league playing attractive attacking football, and I think we might find that this current trend for attritional, low event football has been on the cards for a while.
There is a theory that I heard being discussed by (I think) Rory Smith - what the premier league is experiencing now is a direct consequence of the financial dominance that the league enjoys. It goes like this
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The premier league is financially streets ahead of every other league. See the latest Deloitte list which is dominated by Premier League teams.
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The result of this is that every team in the league can build a squad that is broadly competitive, mostly by out muscling foreign clubs for their players, and can be much more resistant to having their best players taken by other teams (eg Spurs can respond to rumours that Liverpool want Van der Ven by demanding a world record fee for a defender)
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As a result of this strength through the competition, every team is capable of taking points off every other team. Wolves (bottom of the league) can genuinely give Arsenal (top of the league) a game. This doesn’t mean every game is a lottery, but say Chelsea v Brentford with both teams going at each other, goes from 85% Chelsea win, to maybe 60%. You can’t just rely on better players when everyone has good players. It’s not like there is a shortage.
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As a result of this the most sure way to win a game of football is to make games super tight, attritional, and low event (in the knowledge that whoever the opposition is, they can hurt you) ; and seek to win the game in safer fine margin moments - set pieces, corners, throw ins etc. it’s also the area of the game that coaches can most easily influence.
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This what happened in Serie A in the 90s when Italian football was so dominant.
I think it’s fair to say the top of the league is really fucking weird. Arsenal are streets ahead playing the most turgid, boring football you have ever seen. Man City are struggling by their standards, Villa have come from nowhere this year, largely as a result of making games extremely low event, but winning in flashes of momentary brilliance. Liverpool, Chelsea, Utd, Newcastle are all up and down as they pick up points but keep stepping on rakes from teams they ‘should’ be beating on paper, but in reality have the ability to be competitive against anyone.
So the idea that Slot’s football is turgid is really vexing for me. I don’t think anyone’s football is fantastic and I think the league has become really quite miserable. The only clubs having a nice time are those that find themselves winning more games than they would expect to becsuse of their dour football.
I heard someone else on one of the podcasts say their preferred candidate to replace Slot is Luis Enrique, because he plays great attacking football, whereas Xabi is much more attritional. I’m thinking this thinking ‘are we sure that attacking open football is the way to go here’. Liverpool, I think, were quite slow off the mark in understand the shift that has happened in the PL over the last eighteen months. Should we really be doubling down on that?
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Kovac is the obvious choice then. Shit boring football that their fans hate despite having the most points in 7 years.
(I’m joking. I hope)
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Some Arsenal supporters (see The Online Gooner) want Arteta sacked.
Top of the PL.
Top of CL.
Probable LC finalists
Still in FA cup.
They blame his lack of nous, his “cowardice” and his slow build up football for potentially losing the league this season.
This is fickleness at its worst. We are discussing Slot in a slump, a dreadful one to be fair. Imagine this conversation wouldn’t be happening if we were in Arsenals current position.
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This wouldn’t much surprise me to be honest. It was my position for a long time, I have shifted over recent days but I can see why they would hold firm. However I could see them making a change if this is the situation and if Alonso is the guy and is open to stepping in.
I think Michael Cox and Oliver Kay dealt with this decline in “beauty”, for want of a better word, in some of their recent articles for The Athletic. It’s obvious that the best teams want to exert more control but winning has always been about digging deep and getting the points by any allowed means when necessary. That thinking has definitely taken over at Arsenal - compare them from three years ago and now… But it’s not just Arsenal now, quite a few teams in the league are now primed for set pieces, low blocks and all those bad words that Slot hates.
I thought Slot found a nice balance between the control and attacking performance last season but it’s completely lost now. It’s not quite the betrayal of principles that cost Rodgers his job but it’s a prolonged decline that he seemingly can’t make heads or tails of. I’d also say his squad is closer to being built for “nice football” than to “attritional football” and that, for me, is one of the reasons why we keep dropping points we shouldn’t be dropping.
Luis Enrique is amazing but there’s no comparison in difficulty between PL and Ligue 1. The best coaches can make their mark on the league, though, and influence its style to a certain extent like prime Mourinho, Klopp and Guardiola did. Whether he would be able to do it with Liverpool, I can’t tell, especially as PSG team was assembled with basically an open cheque book.
That said, Alonso’s best football is probably closer to the best we played under Slot or even Klopp and, aside from past association with the club and some of current players, that is something that makes me lean towards his possible arrival (should everyone wish so, obviously). His Leverkusen players also didn’t seem to know when to quit and got quite a lot of late goals. Restoration of such mentality is absolutely necessary here.
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See, I’ve got no issue with a slower, controlled play style. To me it shows control and patience, but you need to have the ability to change the pace in an instant.
I’m not convinced we’re doing either.
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Yep agreed. This morning I’ve discussed with colleagues that we’re seeing athletes and defensive organisation winning over skill. Teams are playing the percentages and it works. To some degree, it’s like modern rugby of say 5 years ago.
Where do we and in particular Slot stand with that. I just get the impression that we’re trying force things at times and it’s backfiring spectacularly.
As I’ve said above, I can live with the controlled, even slow style, provided you can see and speed it up in an instant ala Italian teams of the early 1990’s. Too me I was in awe of that league back then. Teams were tough to breakdown, but teams would probe patiently before one moment of half an opportunity being taken ruthlessly.
I don’t see that in this league at all. It’s ugly.
We must’ve walked into a gauntlet of rakes from Palace away onwards
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The problem is that what we are seeing isn’t even turgid. It’s often non commited nonsense. It’s not something I can understand so can not get behind it.
If their was a structure and effort behind it I could get behind it. There’s no pass and move, constructive physical engagement not even a hoof it off the pitch when necessary (we are more likely to make a half hearted tap out for a corner than that 
).
We dominate yet there’s noone who’s got a grip on the game (playmaker). We pass it from foot to foot until someone passes it back to the CBs or Allison then we repeat. It feels aimless. Then a little pressure arrives and we collapse.
It’s us playing for the draw.
Fans can get behind a team that shows structure and commitment, simple things they can understand, even if it’s loosing. A bit of doggedness and believe. Like what we saw against Arsenal, shut their supporters up then go for the throat (the go for the throat didn’t materialise but we did dominate). We’re just not seeing that often enough.
There is no rule for that, how long does it take.
Some don’t even think they should but their stamp on the team (depends what we mean by that).
But what is true is that we live in a world when top clubs hardly tolerate one or more than one bad season in a row.
It’s how the sport is today, it’s not like it was, half the coaches from the past wouldn’t survive then.
We might be a little bit more on the patient side among the top clubs, but it seems like we’re already at a point where it will take a lot for Slot to be here in a few years.
Similarly, although we still have a few Over-the-air TV channels, most of the stuff are on cable. I don’t even bother with New Year count down anymore from TV as it’s about 20 seconds behind, which is such an anticlimactic way to end a year and welcome the new.
Yup, I have gone off-topic again.
Anyways, although we talk about turgid football, I felt that in the final one and a half or 2 seasons under Kloppo, we also played much slower and not quite as “exciting” compared with his early reign, likely due to too much energy spent in pressing and running.
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