If he doesn’t come back to Liverpool. It’s because we’re not happy at how he’s progressed. As I said to Limie, it’s all set up for him to return. Buy back clauses are fairly common, but agreements with the player, two years in advance, are not.
In a market where a youth prospect centre back costs you £40m, sending Quansah out for two years of first team development, and then bringing him back for net £20m at the age of 24 might be very smart indeed. (Not to mention the PSR diddle that comes with selling a homegrown player)
No one is forgetting that. It’s the core point being discussed - it speaks to a disconnect between how the club viewed him and how the manager did.
That is the bone of contention that you continue to ignore. I think everyone accepts that if he was not going to get games then he needed to leave for his benefit and ours. The objection is that is does not speak well of a manager who was so committed to that being the outcome for a player like him.
I think it speaks to a player recruitment strategy that is to a large degree out of the head coaches hands by design.
My bone of contention is that Slot is no longer just being criticised for the things he has got wrong. He also being criticised for parallel universe fantasy outcome versions of things he got 100% right.
Maybe Slot should have played him more. Then if we missed out on the league title to Arsenal, it doesn’t matter because at least we got a young centre back more minutes. And that what it’s all about, right?
I don’t want him back either – he’s far too slow. But more importantly, haven’t we signed two young centre-backs, plus one who’s injured in France but, if I’m not mistaken, should be fit for pre-season? Oh, and we’ve still got Leone as well.
Ignoring Jacquet, those other 3 young CBs should not be in anyone’s thoughts regarding the first team. They are academy purchases who at best will be years away from the first team and I think in the case of the lad from Burnley I dont think anyone has much expectation for him other than a couple of years with the U21s before moving back to the EFL
Imagine the amount of coach changes at clubs in football if it was all down to fans’ wishes or great predictions how much they have left before “if he doesn’t win the next game or how many, he’s gone”.
There wouldn’t be enough coaches, you’d get Slot at Liverpool twice a season or in a few years.
Of course its a fucking criticism. What is happening? It just isn’t anywhere near the stupid criticism you decided to hold up so you could knock it down.
I’m responding to people saying that Slot should have played Quansah more last year with a very simple argument. He won the fucking league.
I’m sorry if I’m being basic. There are probably ‘layers’ that I’m not getting. But I don’t want to go back in time to live in the universe where Slot put more emphasis on Jarrell Quansah’s development, because I’m not sure we win the league in that universe. And I really, really enjoyed winning the league.
And the criticism of Slot goes beyond the number of appearances he gave Quansah last season. I mean fuck, I explicitly said that he was largely excused for that given we did win the league. But it’s also pretty obvious that the people who are raising this concern about him are people who don’t think Quansah is someone whose use would represent having to balance the prospect of winning the league vs developing home grown player.
There is a lot of room for differences of opinion here about how much a fan can trust their own eyes/instincts vs the judgement of a manager. It is totally reasonable to back Slot’s judgement on this, but there are differences of opinion there. And this is a conversation hitting a wall not because of that difference of opinion but because of the lack of respect given to the specifically articulated arguments being put forward. Which is frankly a theme of Slot related discussions with you over the past several months.
I don’t want to talk down winning the league as an achievement, it’s obviously a massive one, but I guess I’m going to… he did get basically exactly the same points total as Klopp did the previous season when we finished 3rd. The season even played out pretty much the same way with a super start that burned out in the 2nd half of the campaign.
Klopp was able to do get to 82 points while using the entire squad including young players. We got 84 points in the league winning season. Why would it be impossible to give young players game time, as Klopp did, and still win the league?
Yeah, and in this case we’re not even talking about a youngster who has little first team experience and a catalogue of injuries behind them - we’re talking about a guy who under Klopp had won a starting berth on merit.
I’m not saying it’s impossible. I’m saying we can’t know what might have happened. All we can say is what actually happened.
In a lot of ways this is like the hindsight criticism Klopp/FSG got for not signing players in the summer of 2019, when the squad was struggling in 20/21. The reality is that Klopp started the league winning campaign like a fucking train, and he won 26/27 games that season. Who knows what happens if he is trying to bed in three new signings.
Put it this way, hypothetically speaking, I can offer you the chance to go back to August 2024, and run that season again. Only this time, Slot will give more game time to youngsters like Quansah and Elliot. Obviously the league will play out as it does, and I can’t guarantee that we’ll win it.
