Did I say anything about the result?
Sorry if I did. I only meant to implique a performance that resembles have some coaching nous about it.
You know something decent and hopefully understandable.
Fair enough. It’s not a bad time to play them. They appear to shipping goals and we may have just hit some decent form.
I do believe we can beat them however saying stuff like that I prefer to leave in the pre match threads.
Here I generally look at the past however was thinking that this match is quite an opportunity.
Any win or domination against any English club that remain in the CL at this stage might have a psychological impact later on if we get drawn against them… Slight at best I know, but at least a win would be recent and on record in the media scrutiny
Looking at our lack of spine at Bournemouth and the first half hour against Newcastle, they’ll be licking their lips at the prospect of facing us. There’s a mental fragility there, compounded by the team looking poorly coached for months. While I’m not even thinking of blaming Salah, Slot is caught between the hammer and the anvil with him - I think the team looks better when he’s not starting and he probably can’t bench him now after that silly interview and genuine lack of options in attack. Guardiola will know how to exploit it.
Hmm not really that fragile if you come back from 2 goals and 1 goal and then win one handsomely?
I think Salah has to start now, not because of his strop, but because we just don’t have the options. Salah has benefitted from the injuries down the right hand side. Bradley being done for the season means Frimpong isn’t an option further forward, and then Frimpongs injury means Szoboszksi has to play at RB. Everyone who could take Salah’s place is injured or needs to be deployed elsewhere due to injury.
Personally I think Salah has plenty to offer the team, but I would prefer to see him coming off the bench on 60-70mins, rather than starting games. He needs to adapt his game to where he is physically now - he needs to be more of a creator than a scorer.
Nice to see that we’ve finally made a move in the transfer market. ![]()
you could just swap salah and gakpo, forcing them both down the line to cut back…
Salah doesn’t have to start all the time.
Szobo might be more needed at RB, but he can still do a job inside right for example.
We’ve seen Slot do different things in last months: 4-2-3-1 with 2 wingers, 4-2-3-1 with 1 winger, 4-2-3-1 with 0 wingers, 4-diamond-2, 4-square-2 (or basically 4-2-2-2).
Last time I’ve seen Salah on the left was probably the assist for Sturridge against Arsenal in the first games of 17/18.
Same with Shaqiri with the cross for Gini against Barca.
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You mean back to left footed player playing left wing and right footed player playing right wing? ![]()
I don’t know if @Redbj meant changing their sides or us rotating Salah and Gakpo on the right. I guess the former.
But yeah, that was my point, how rarely I saw some players on the opposite side. In Salah’s case much more understandable than Shaqiri’s.
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Finally, Hughes ends the debate on Slot. Hopefully…
OK, they are never going to tear a strip off each other, but interesting nonetheless. Slot does not look like a man about to be sacked.
Just wana say that I’m glad Hughes listened to me ![]()
The key thing for me was the articulation of the vision behind what they are doing, PLUS the alignment between all three of them…
Interesting interview and on the face of it everything is rosy. Things change easily though and I’d wager that Slot’s future remains very much in the balance. There have been some promising signs lately (bar Bournemouth), but he’ll need a really strong finish to feel secure in his position.
Failure to get into the Champions League next season and he’s gone.
I’ve been really holding off on raising this, but as improved as the Newcastle performance ended up being, it didn’t actually give me much more confidence that Slot has the answers. In most ways what was good about it was a throw back to what we were good at last season, but exposed a good amount of the threats (I wont say flaws, because its just a trade off rather than a flaw) that Slot wanted to eliminate from our game with the increased focus on control. That version of the side is good enough to challenge for all the honors so going back to it isnt a bad thing, but I don’t know how Slot does it with authority and confidence having already tried to move away from it.