I’m sure his wife and kids are more than happy for a stranger on the internet to put a timeline on their grief.
Maybe we just all stop trying to gauge what impact the Jota incident has had on people. We have no clue and never will. And it’s probably not the same for every person either. All we can be certain of is that it will have had an effect on everyone at the club in some way.
It’s quite unedifying seeing his name bandied around in an thread that has pretty much been reduced to to discussing when the manager should have got the sack or if we’ll now hang on until the summer.
The squad is very imbalanced and also the team really look like theyre just going through the motions. i dont know what slot is telling them but him having to come out with a myriad of excuses every time is just sad. Hughes is just as much to blame for all this.
I disagree. Having his shirt and number hanging up in the changing room or the fans singing his name at the 20 minute mark of every game cannot be easy for the squad to move through the different stages of grief.
Leaving the emotion of Jota’s passing to one side, from a football perspective we undoubtedly miss his drive, directness, finishing, willingness to run in behind.
From that perspective alone he’s been badly missed.
He was not remotely as lowly paid as keeps getting mentioned here, but we seemingly had no interest in putting him in our top echelon. We learned recently that the summer before City apparently made a tenative approach and I’d imagine that would have put $ in his eyes and then he saw that we were not going to come anywhere close to matching what he could get on the free market. This is was likely to be his last big contract and so I have no issue with him wanting to pursue that, especially when he didnt have to run away to some backwater to earn it.
Its a lot of money to pay for a man about to enter his 30s for whom his hard running is a core trait. And one who was not always first choice last season. I get why we didnt want to extend him at that level, but I never liked the argument for why this summer was the best time to move him on given everything else.
I don’t see why there is a need to pile onto Slot while conceding that he probably isn’t the right choice going forward.
Sure, I do believe Jota’s death had an impact. And I also believe that we won the title last season because Slot got a lot out of Salah, Diaz and Gravenberch who pretty much had career years.
But that doesn’t mean Slot can turn this team around. Sometimes there just needs to be a change because there needs to be a reset in confidence, in spirits and in ideas.
We talking about players/management/fans using Jota’s death as an excuse/reason for the decline of the team. It has nothing to-do with the grief anyone is feeling, I take issue with the grief being used as a crutch. Is this too difficult for you to understand?
Your position. is valid as a continuing cause, but is perceived as denying it had any effect.
Whereas on balance, it did have an effect, which was to hasten our destabilisation as a team unit. From then it’s all about coping and recovery. A death happened, and to deny it didnt even have a destabilising impact, is quite misplaced.
Our poor form now, is not to me causally linked to this, its now more Slots incapability to repair it.
Truth is it actually was the start of a huge shit sandwich for the club as has been the entire season.
