Aye, there is an obvious case for that argument with the juniors like Koumas and Morton, but far less so with the players we’re actually talking about. If it was just a case of Slot being more comfortable leaning on a very lean core and so marginalizing players on the outside of that it would be one thing. But it was more than that - Slot made the public and private concession that such an approach was not viable in England and the lesson he took from his first season was moving forward he was going to have to get more meaningful minutes from a bigger collection of players. yet despite this Quansah and Elliott were still led to believe they needed to leave to get opportunities to play.
That is not a criticism of Slot from the prior season that can be countered by pointing to us having won the league. It is a big red flag about his fit moving forward. It was an indication he was going to turn into the sort of manager who would not fare well in adversity and would compound that falling back on criticism of his players he did have when things go wrong. That was the argument I made in the summer and it is coming ever more into focus.
No more than you have convinced yourself that the league would still have been won had Slot used different players in loads of games.
My point is just that we don’t know what would have happened had Slot tried to use more players in the league. He won it doing it the way he did. He might not have if he’d gone in a different direction.
Hypothetically speaking, if you were able to go back to the summer of 2024, knowing how that season went, but this time running it again with Dlot giving more games to Quansah, Elliot and Chiesa would you risk it? I wouldn’t. I would change a thing about either title winning season.
Same argument with Klopp, who got retrospective flak for not investing in the squad in the summer of 2019. He goes on to win 26/27 games rendering any criticism (IMO) A bit pointless.
A coach is always entitled to make a judgement on a player he doesn’t fancy. I always quite liked Sakho, more so than Lovren and Skrtel, but that didn’t stop Klopp taking one look at him and going ‘Nah, not for me’.
Ultimately these are the kind of decisions a coach has to be free to make, and if they get too many wrong, they end up paying the price (as Slot might be about to).
Otherwise you end up in a situation where people beyond the manager are making impositions on his ability to pick a team or shape a squad.
He (and Quansah) was clearly good enough during Klopp’s last season. He would have actually done well this season since he has better open play passing ability than Szobo and never runs away from the ball like Wirtz. He is also one of our best pressers alongside with Diaz, Jota and Nunez.
And yes, Klopp would most likely have won 2025/2026 as well had he stayed for another season, as the new midfield began to adapt to his gameplan (don’t forget 2023/2024 was Macca, Dom, Endo and Grav’s first season there), especially without a total clusterf*ck like the Tottenham away game when we was clearly robbed.
I also believe that we would have done better in CL knockout phase under Jurgen, since it was at that time Slot began to diverge from just tinkering around Klopp football and started testing his stupid “Slotball” and we immediately paid the price against PSG.
Now Slot sacking is imminent, I hope that Elliott can be reintegrated into our squad next season. He is one of the very few guys (I think Szobo is the only other guy) left who can play effective pressing football after we lost Diaz, Jota and Nunez.
Back in RED 
