But then the counter argument would be he has that connection to the city, the fans every 2 weeks at home, and after winning the title last season there is that connection, when he saw the parade, he could not have helped but feel the love and embrace it , when jota died, he was thrust into it as the figurehead and he dealt with it impeccably, i personally dont doubt his connection to the city, but i do find it strange that some seem to demand ( not you Livvy ) that he moves here, at the end of the day, his kids or even his wife might not want to leave their homeland , and we as fans have no right to demand it.
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Sigh…and supporting this club comes along with certain consequences…like not acting like a complete idiot in demanding something that is yours or no one elses business especially when it comes down to a managers personal life.
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Thanks for sharing your opinion; I won’t be doing anything with it.
Other than replying to it🤣
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I think we can stick to the football stuff, if we want to criticise Slot, plenty enough there
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That’s really nothing new or astonishing.
Most of them live outside of Liverpool. And yes, for some of them it means also being relatively close to Manchester airport. It’s a well known reality for I don’t know how long, decades?
The connection you’re talking about isn’t necessarily made through living or spending time in the city. Klopp himself said he was in the centre of Liverpool a few times in the whole of his time there. Trophy parades included! Klopp settled in Formby (where there’s also a lot of them), he just recently said how he quickly realized it was impossible to be or remain in the city.
Rafa explained a while ago on the Overlap how those factors (size of the cities, airports) were important for certain players and families, trying to convince them to come. Rafa himself, he was on the Wirral. Actually, his family still is and he constantly drove or took trains back home when he was working up in Newcastle. We wouldn’t really say about Rafa that he’s lazy or not professional enough, would we?
Joe Cole said the same when he joined Liverpool from Chelsea and he initially wanted to be in the city, go for walks, coffee and meals. Carra and Stevie told him good luck with that. Quickly realized he couldn’t.
Kerkez’s dad recently spoke how they live closer to Manchester than Liverpool (and their neighbours are the likes of Szobo, Slot and some other players), Hale Barns to be exact, but that they would be soon moving to a new home. Closer to Liverpool, but still not in the city.
Salah lives in Cheshire I think. Also where a number of them are settled.
Alonso was I think one of the rare players who had an apartment in the Docks (I’m not sure if it was for the whole his stay here or just at the start), but I imagine when he did, he also lived very much on a apartment - Melwood relation, not really spending much time among people in city centre.
These people, if and when they can hang out, they visit each other. Or go on trips. Some have people (I think the club also has a department helping them with that) who plan things in advance for them, whenever there’s a chance. Who cares where they go in their free time. That’s their world, they have the ability to disappear somewhere completely different for even a day or two and go back to business as usual the next day.
I imagine it’s more a worry for their families, how to keep them “entertained”. Also depending on circumstances like if they’re already with a partner/married, with kids or not, how much of their families live with them or visit regularly. They’re not there most of the time and in free time it’s either rest, hang out or travel somewhere.
Recently from an article by the Athletic:
“Edwards, Ward and Marques are based at FSG’s office in Altrincham, just over 30 miles east of Liverpool. The club’s Kirkby training complex is a 45-minute drive away. Edwards visits infrequently, giving sporting director Richard Hughes space to look after the club’s day-to-day operations.”
So they’re also 15 minutes away from Manchester airport.
We’re talking about things that have been the norm for who knows how long.
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Regarding last season, with the parade and everything, I see that as a bit of an exception, not a normal situation, just like the loss of Diogo. What I mean is that these are more normal things that help you become familiar with Scouse culture, life there, the history, the way of thinking, etc. You don’t experience that every two weeks at Anfield.
I can only say what I see and hear from the outside, and something is missing in that connection.
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I mean, that connection with the city, that’s very vague. How do we find out these things and how do we measure them?
Not everyone will be involved with the Hillsborough campaign or charity actions like the Benitez family, who have made Wirrall their home since they came until this day. Or Klopp now with his work with the Foundation and also some charity moves (some choose to do it in a way that’s pretty incognito). You also need time obviously.
Understanding the city and it’s people? Who’s to say he doesn’t understand it? Someone can understand it perfectly and still be a failure here as a football coach (what they’re brought in to be, especially today) or not merit more than a few seasons.
The football is what’s really the issue this season and some of the other things are overexaggerated in my opinion. They can be nice bonuses and increase the sympathy or love towards a coach, but they’re not key things. Or simply be generally unlikeable.
In terms of interviews, I think he got quite a bit of praise last season (also when things were largely going well on the pitch). Yes, since then, he did have a few interviews or sentences where he could’ve kept his mouth shut or express himself differently.
Ange recently on the Overlap spoke about the amount of interviews you do over a season (for a European club basically), it’s impossible not to say some stupid stuff every now and again.
I understand Klopp was a pretty special package when you look at the football coach and human being, but we have to realize that most of them will not be: the coach, friend but not best friend, father figure, activist, philosopher, political commentator, comedian, cheerleader and who knows what else he was or was perceived as.
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Yeah, if only he had them in doing some hard running 48 hours before our next game then maybe the players wouldn’t be so tired come the end of games.
Yes, there are plenty of bellends in the Liverpool fanbase that go too far and have no business involving Slot’s personal life and family. That’s part of every fanbase of every club in every sport from the beginning of time. That doesn’t mean that you get to tar the entire Liverpool fanbase with the same brush because of some dickheads.
Liverpool fans are still levels above everyone else. Evertonians have made booing their favourite pastime, and let’s not mention how they treated Benitez, just because he happened to manage the ‘redshite’ some 20 years ago. Chelsea fans turned against Mourinho and that’s the smallest of their indiscretions over the years. City fans can’t even fill their own stadium on a regular basis, despite being gifted the kind of success they could only dream of 20 years ago. Let’s not even go to what would have happened at 99% of the continental clubs if their fanbases were being served shit week in, week out for a year and counting.
Slot, if anything, has had it easy. A lot of other fans would have turned against him a lot sooner and a lot more viciously.
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Some of these fundamental things are hard to seriously improve over a season. That’s also one of many aspects, of course. I think certain damage was already done in pre-season. Not helped by the dynamics of some of our most important transfers. But it’s possible to have a bad pre-season in the physical department regardless of the amount of squad changes.
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This. Because it is terra firma.
Interpreting his comments or going too heavy one way or another with everything he says seems wide of the mark, as does getting too stuck on a fella having lunch at a bistro somewhere. I can’t tell from a picture if it is days off, or a day off, or when it was, or what the context was, etc.
Anyway, just wanted to weigh in that there’s more than enough there to criticize him with the footy side of it.
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There seem to be a number of people who are unfamiliar with the environs of Manchester airport.
It’s a place that demands an exit.
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I don’t begrudge Slot wanting to spend time with his family. I thought it was a bit strange that he didn’t move his family here when he took the job, but the reality of a football manager is that your job is so demanding that you’re not seeing much of your family for the bulk of the season, anyway, so it makes sense that he wouldn’t disrupt their lives to bring them here. I’ve also never doubted that Slot works hard at his job.
I just don’t think he’s earned another season as our head coach.
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This is a reasonable counter to any individual instance of this sort of thing of Slot having an actual life - “Slot gave the guys a midweek break, and Klopp gave them a midweek break once so lets not go overboard”. Of course though the concern with Slot is the amount of time they have been afforded away from training this year, and that in the context of observations of how little quality training we do during the season and the seeming lack of legs and physical preparedness this side has.
Slot has his ideas and methods and shouldnt change them because people are being dicks online, but by the same token when you do something fans are uneasy about you damn well better have the results necessary to bat away the criticism. Slot doesnt, and its very easy to convincingly draw a straight line through the amount of time off he and the players get, how badly physically prepared we look, and how poor the results and performances and have been. He has put himself in a situation where he is going to get criticized for publicly having time off because it is perceived there has been way too much of that and not nearly enough actual hard work. So no, he shouldnt be criticized for having lunch in London with his visiting daughter. But that isnt really JUST what this pic represents.
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But that’s what they are criticising. If they were bemoaning that he sits around his house watching Netflix when he should be at the training ground, I would say it was fair comment. As it is, they are having a go at him for having a private family life. And that was a paparazzi picture, not something he has posted on Facebook.
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How do you know they’re even Liverpool fans? How do you know they’re even real people?
The odd daft comment on social media, probably made by a teenager half way across the globe, does not deserve an inquisition. It’s meaningless.
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Now back to what’s relevant, does Slot like a dab of MDMA? 
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