Last point on young players, and then I promise I’ll shut up for a bit. It’s really hard for kids to do well without someone on the pitch who’ll look after them.
Against Brighton, after Rio came on one of their yard dogs absolutely clattered him. Not one Liverpool player got in the Brighton players face, or challenged the referee. Slot had a go at the fourth official to be fair.
Can you imagine Milner or Hendo letting that go? Where was Van Dijk? Or Szobozlai? Or Mac Allister. No-one saying If you kick our lad, we’re going to kick two of yours, so wind your necks in.
Sure enough the lad had a quiet ten minutes after that, and I don’t blame him. He’s a child.
I have no idea how much of this lands with Slot, and I suppose it depends where your needle is regarding him, but we are desperately short of leaders in this team, and specifically the kind of leadership that says to a kid like Rio Don’t you worry kid. I’ve got your back. No-one is fucking with you while I’m here.
I think that says two things when looking at the broader graph:
Other teams starting adopting similar gengenpressing tactics, which meant that what was once a Liverpool advantage became more of the norm.
As Liverpool improved and teams became wary of their press, you saw more low blocks, which lends itself to less distance covered, which is why you see a general downward trend.
I don’t put as much stock in some of these broader numbers and, instead, I’d be curious to know how much distance is covered against more open opponents. That would give me a better sense of whether this trend is a symptom of lack of fitness, energy, or commitment.
If we were a team that was brilliant on the ball, and, in the best sense of the phrase, made the ball do all the running, I would not mind about the distance covered stats.
But we are neither one thing nor the other. Neither hard working, nor brilliant on the ball.
Quansah was at the club last season when we won the league.
he probably wanted more game time, personally i think we still win the league if he got that game time, your making the assumption that if JQ played, we wouldnt have won the league…to you its either/or when it really doesnt have to be, but that is not the issue here.
the discussion is centred around getting rid of him this season…having no belief in him (Slot doesnt) ..getting rid after such an upheaval this summer in playing staff…and not loaning him out…
and guess what, it was a shite call… we are a shambles this year, he would have played more, and he would have given us the op. to rest VVD… it was a mistake to let him go.
its also a massive issue to assume Guehi was in the bag…
It was probably a combination of us receiving what we judged an important offer and the player also wanting to go and get regular football.
We have an option included and I don’t think it’s anything more than that. We cannot “guarantee” to anyone what we’ll want to do at CB in a year or two (which can be a long time in football) and what Quansah will want then, football and money wise.
We possibly agreed on some very basic aspects of a potential deal (not the whole of it), but I don’t view it like it’s set for him to return in the summer of 2026 or 2027. Probably more no than yes. Not to mention Quansah would likely want to be viewed as a starter if we’d be bringing him back.
Some things also need to align timing wise, so I don’t think it’s clever to connect Quansah’s sale to the chase of Guehi too much. Leverkusen also have their own missions and we had a decision to make. We brought someone like Leoni in a window in which we sold someone like Quansah.
Shit happened with the deal for Guehi and what I could ask our club is perhaps we could’ve worked on another target during that time, knowing also that we’re sometimes a club that decides on a target and it’s either him or nobody else.
And yeah, we had more bad luck with Leoni’s injury, even if I cannot tell on the basis of an hour’s performance against Southampton at home whether that would’ve made a difference in that position. He looked decent, but that’s a too small sample.
At the very least, Quansah and/or other underutilized squad players could and should have been used more often in the final matches after the title was already secured. There’s no excuse for this not happening. It could have sent a strong message to the team that they were valued, etc.; instead, they were only needlessly sidelined.
If they were going to swap the coach at this break, I think we would have heard something by now.
We also look to be a bit of a mess at executive level at the moment, which doesn’t help.
The other thing is that it is assumed that Alonso would take over. It’s possible that any preferred choice is actually in another position at the moment and isn’t available until the end of the season.
I’m not sure what the correlation with distance covered and league position is.
We won the league near the bottom of that stat and with Klopp just above the average.
But the trend is clear. Even under Klopp it gradually lowered and Slots style maintained the trend to new lows. Other teams ramping it up? Our lack of press? Older players not tracking? Whatever.
Certainly a talking point though and another Slot bashing angle.
Sounds like we might be in a situation where we need to sort out Edwards and Hughes before deciding on Slot. A new manager will want to know who they’re working for before signing on.
No, I’m not. I’m saying we don’t know. I’m saying that suggesting (as people have) that Slot should have played him more is also adding a variable that might have meant we didn’t win the league.
I’ve already said what I think the decision was with Quansah, but I’ll go over it again.
I think Quansah was at the point where he needed to be playing regular, week in week out football, and he wasn’t going to be first choice here - even if Slot had more time for him. Van Dijk and Konate were the clear two going into the season.
So there are three main benefits to doing the deal as it was structured (£40m, with a £60m buy back).
Liverpool get to bring him back in a couple of years, hopefully a much better player, for £20m net, which is a good deal considering you can pay double that for prospects.
The way PSR is structured means we get to book £40m pure profit from the sale of a homegrown player. That creates a huge amount of compliance wriggle room for us. Even if we end up bringing him back for sixty, that would be amortised over a 5-6 year deal.
If he doesn’t develop as we’d hoped then it’s not our problem and the £40m looks good money.
So I don’t see it as bombing him out. I see it as decent player who needed games has been allowed to leave to get them, and a pathway for him to return put in place.
There have been plenty of games over the years where you would see a young, inexperienced CB make a costly mistake and the grizzled ex-pro on commentary would state “he’ll learn from that” or “that’s to be expected from a young CB learning his trade, he’ll be better for it”.
Not with Slot though. Hook him after 45 minutes and ship him out asap.
The actions of a coward and a bully.
