You have to remember with Real Sociedad B its very rare for B clubs to be in Segunda nowadays (Even Madrid and Barca are not particularly regular anymore and Sociedad ironically have been one of the exceptions in the last few years) and Sociedad had only spent 2 years previously in Segunda in their history and that was the 60s, this was their first season in 4 years since Xabi was there.
I would say there are options to consider but the fly by night names such as Glasner, Frank and the bloke at Bournemouth have demonstrated it’s not always worth the risk.
Alonso’s reputation as a coach is built on:
• obsessive tactical detail
• demanding training sessions
• high standards of discipline
His success at Bayer Leverkusen came partly because players fully bought into those demanding methods, something that was much harder to impose at Madrid. Do I think he will be a success at LFC? I don’t know. But what I do know is it will not be because of a lack of preparation or readiness on his part.
Sadly, I believe you are right. Although since roughly the end of November I was OK with Slot gone.
I actually stopped following LFC in the PL back in December… tried again when we played Wolverhampton, that. I was looking forward towards the CL game.
Me too, I think the drop in performance affected a lot of fans emotionally last autumn, but its increasingly looking like the manager will remain and the Directors stick with their plan.
I dont think this has a happy ending though. My feeling is Slot isnt capable enough, and crucially, I dont think he gets the club like Benitez and Klopp did. So we have to wait until the formula has thrown up the outcome. I’ll be dead straight, I think Hughes, along with Edwards, have gone balls deep cybermetrics, and are running a corporatist venture with our great club.
Edwards has less control than he did last time techically. I am not that surprised they haven’t sacked a manager who won the title and is still in the running in all the competitions they expected.
Its probably even worse than that in reality. Id imagine most neutral observers would have viewed those first 50 games and said the results were no more than we deserved, and maybe even we deserved a little bit more. I think those same people would say that over the last 50 we got more than we deserved form them.
Well, still looks like a corporate re-fit to me. Has a top club ever attempted this before, what is looking like swapping out the entire first team in say 13months? Its ambitious and now we’ve seen, volatile.
Bar Quansah we needed to make the changes in the summer, take Kerkez he was the best LB in the league, he has started to look the business.
In fact in all honesty the one player they didn’t need to replace in Quansah they didn’t. In fact if it is based on metrics you’d expect to him have gone by now.
Yes, well when you get to this point of understanding of the situation, it does beg why was the squad replacement not feathered in the preceding years, to soften the impact, because wholesale changes like we have seen, and to come again this summer, simply destroy the spirit of the team. It should be done more organically than last summer. Because that wholesale change in players is the devil in this detail.
Of the team that won the title, we got meaningful minutes from 8 players who were relatively recent arrivals (within the past 3 seasons) plus decent minutes from an emerging younger player like Quansah. For all the “we were paralyzed by Ward’s unexpected exit” talk, that is actually a decent level of productive turnover (not just signings, but singings who actually played and stayed) for an already successful side.
I think despite that turnover there were still some long term stalwarts whose long term replacements needed to be found. We were subject to a couple of situations outside of our control that required a response (in which I include the inevitability of Darwin having to go). And on top of all of that we had a manger who claimed for his vision to be realized he needed a series of additional changes, and Hughes and Edwards supported that. The result was more turnover than we probably should have made. I think the backroom guys should have been less compliant with Arne’s wishes explaining that a continuity appointment shouldnt have so many good (and young) players he is unable to find a use for, but they didnt. They should have been more circumspect about moving on players who didnt need it given the rest of the changes that were enforced. So the result was I think we did too much at once but it wasnt because we’d been backed into it by not having done the work in the years prior.
Thank you, good answer. Do you think winning the league at a canter led us into a false sense of confidence, which enabled the amount of changes that were made?
It’s possible I guess, but I dont know how that would flow.
I have wondered whether Edward’s past success in the market gave them “smartest man in the room” disease and where they should have taken a breathe to say “is this move one we really should be making given everything else” they over rated their ability to improve our situation by doing clever shit in the market. If I was to put my money on it, this is why they backed Slot to the degree they did because it allowed them one more opportunity to show how clever they are
Just watching a redmentv YT video and it is the same criticism from all 3 and what most of us are saying/thinking, what is the plan? what is Arne trying to do? what is our style of play?
This is the crux of us feeling there is a need for change.
that. I was looking forward towards the CL game.
