Up to the shitshow at the weekend, even after stepping on all those rakes, after all the defeats and draws, and all the let downs of the late winners and equalisers. This awful run that has left us wanting the manager sacked. We were still fourth.
That is amazing to be, until you look at the results the result of the teams are getting. Everyone is dropping points everywhere. We’re all in the same boat.
I think Slot is getting a lot of unfair criticism as the main reason for our inconsistency is the failure to get CHs in the transfer window. The Bournemouth game was an accident waiting to happen as Slot had bare minimum to get a good result in Marseille then they had to fly 1000 miles back to Liverpool on Thursday and fly again to Bournemouth on Friday and play on Saturday.
All the players gave their all against Marseille and quite a few players are playing every 3 days for quite a while. Bournemouth had a week to prepare and they are a very goood and intense team for 95 min. I am sure Klopp went through a similar bad patch due to a lot of injuries to our entire back line but we never asked for him to be sacked. Slot only stubborn trait is when he wears blinkers and is very reluctant to play certain players and everyone is astonished the team stutters and fails when he is forced to play them when they are not match fit to be an effective alternative.
Sixth 
!
I said prior to this weekend’s shit show.
You stated, ‘We are still fourth’.
I just picked up on that perhaps you should edit it to, 'We were fourth up until then or something.
Apropos of nothing… some anagrams:
NEAR LOST
LONE RATS
STALE RON
Of all the bullshit being shared this is probably the greatest bullshit. At the end of the season we could have finished top 4 and won the CL. At the other end of the spectrum we could finish in bottom half of the table and win nothing. These eventualities will have a different outcome for Slot
No, I said we were fourth. You even quoted it.
Are you OK?
Really interesting post. I don’t think the answer is putting all our chips on playing shite football though. These things are cyclical. We had the era of Mourinho celebrating any goalless draw away from home. Then the Klopp v Pep era where we had to win every game to have a chance and played the best football I’ve ever seen.
Ultimately football is an escape for most of us. I want to look forward to watching our games. I would rather play exciting football and ultimately fail, like we did at times under Klopp, than have to watch Arsenal-esque anti-football twice a week
Haha the STILL threw me.
This attritional type football has yet to win anything and it fell apart a bit on Sunday with Man Utd playing dare I say it a more attractive game.
Agreed on the playmaker. And we dominate because teams allow us to more than us pushing it.
Don’t agree with this. We just haven’t got that “thing” or person that allows us to open teams up.
No coincidence in my opinion that some of our best performances this season are against teams that dominate the ball against us aka Arsenal, Madrid.
Don’t agree with this. We just haven’t got that “thing” or person that allows us to open teams up.
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It’s not like we are deliberately playing for a draw. Yet in effect we are. Due to the, lack of movement and acceleration of the game, type of passes and not having a central player to dictate pace (though we have rarely had this anyway however it does seem that we need one more than ever atm).
Arsenal are more pragmatic than City, they showed a few times that they don’t mind having less possession even at home.
For example, it’s how they dismantled Bayern (a quality side) earlier in the season. I think at one point in the first half they had less than 40%. You could say Bayern forced them to, but from what I saw, it was a deliberate plan by Arsenal on that specific day.
Though of course that they’re more aggressive off the ball than some of the lower teams who sit back more, that gives you some opportunities to play in behind and also grab parts of the game by keeping the ball (which we had to do against them recently and did).
More generally speaking now, when a team that wants to control games by a lot of possession isn’t in it’s best form, sometimes a poorer version of that yeah, looks slow and boring. Such teams, when they struggle breaking teams down, will not suddenly begin to play wildly. I understand that’s what some fans would do, but it’s not a FIFA game where you press fast running all the time and play direct long balls to wingers.
There can be a fine line from circling around in order to break but struggling to and succeeding and looking like one of the most exciting sides in the world. I’m not saying it’s us by the way, because ever since pre-season it looked to me like we struggled in pressing from the front, defensive transition and set-pieces.
Spain under Enrique got a lot of critism for doing too much possession without enough verticality. I heard things like that football is finished, etc. Of course it’s not. A lot of the same principles are now at PSG. You also need players (which Spain eventually got with Yamal and Williams, but through the centre they don’t have a real recognized striker, often playing with a or double false #9’s).
You have to play together on and off the ball, accuracy and quality comes first before speed. Once you get that right, then you can go faster. I don’t mind playing slower, but then you have to accelerate and vice versa. Switch sides, penetrate, if you can’t, go back in order to go forward again. Even the best sides in football don’t play only vertical and 200mp/h all the time. There is fundamentally nothing wrong with Slot’s theoretical idea how he’d like a top side to play. Putting it in place and consistently providing results is another thing.
Then different taste among fans is something else.
I found that we were often standing too close to each other near the end of the 18 yard box with 2 or 3 players, or when we played wider with the ball whipped in from the wings, no one were in the 6 yard box area. It’s happening way too often.
I think we do, but we don’t utilise them properly. Over the last 2-3 months, we look very static as no one seems to be willing to offer any sort of movement ahead of the ball, so too often we are easy to defend against, which leads to us passing either sideways or backwards
That doesn’t make our performances and results ok though,
If anything, we’ve missed an opportunity to win another league title
Can’t disagree with this to be fair. We could certainly do with getting Wirtz on the ball more.
I dont buy this. Valverde was commenting this week on the absurdity of his CL team (Bilbao) losing their best player in the summer to Palace, a side with very little expectation of competing on the same sort of level as they are. But this isn’t a new development. The Prem’s economic strength has been around at this level for a while. It was over a decade now that a very competitive Sevilla side lost their captain to a no hope Cardiff side.
What I think is there are 3 things, two of which are idiosyncrasies of specific managers, and one systemic issue:
But getting Wirtz on the ball want do much unless the players ahead of him are giving him options and working to find space for him to pass into