The Hunt for Klopp’s Successor

Some of the best coaches ever, but not in recent times. Even if I think Hag isn’t that terrible. He has his faults in United struggling to get back, but I think most problems still lie within the club. If it’s Slot indeed, I will absolutely try to look at him separately from anything else and give him a proper chance. I can separate that from the feeling that yeah, it seems like this summer we don’t have great options like we had in 2004 and 2015.

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That’s where my caution lies. I remember recently, De Boer, Ten Hag, these were meant to be the hot shots out of the Dutch league. Heck, FSG had a hard on over De Boer at one point, and he utterly bombed his career after he left Ajax.

The hope with Slot is that he has the personality to go alongside what he’s trying to implement, which is in contrast to Ten Hag, De Boer, and some of the previous Dutch managers. We’ve got a structure in place, and players used to playing a high intensity game, although I hope Slot’s training isn’t as intense as Klopp’s.

As a fan of football, this period post-Klopp and our decisions, will make a fascinating case study. I wanted us to go down the route of clubs like Porto, Benfica, Sporting, Dortmund, Monaco in terms of player recruitment and managerial appointments. I guess we’ll see how it turns out in the cauldron that is the Premier League.

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So like every other team nowadays, including all youth and school teams

Midas touch preferably

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I was thinking about first Xabi, then Emery who sign new contracts and decide to stay at their clubs. Both aren’t genuine heavyweights (yet), but still potential candidates for us. They rule themselves out. Why?

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I did actually.
Never saw him as our first choice tbh

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That’s actually not true at all.

When it comes to slagging off the players, manager, staff, dinner ladies, fans, stadium, training ground, pitch, goal posts, size of the seats he actually has a lot of positive words to say.

@StevieJayUSA had.

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As other people suggested here, it looks very likely that we are going for a coach based model, who would have less control in acquiring players.

I am sure the coach will still have say in players , but It will not be the kind of control, as Klopp had and as someone suggested here , that this might be a model from Edwards(to retain all power with him/Hughes) because of his tussle with Klopp the last time around.

Klopp clearly had the power to influence signings/contracts. This is one of the reasons I can see why we are abruptly being linked with managers no one was even expecting at all, especially for the likes of Gary Oneil, Kovac , Slot now .
They all seem to tick the box for Edwards , as these sort of managers will be more than happy to take the next step , as long they are involved in coaching and have a bit (not all) say in transfers incoming/going.

The Amorim links ruling us out, kind of proved a similar thing . The portuguese sports news outlet Abola, which is basically a benefica backed paper, posted this article :

The key phrase from the article is

What is certain is that, in addition to the very attractive financial conditions, West Ham has also given the coach the freedom to design a squad to his liking, according to his ideas, which was, in fact, also one of Rúben Amorim’s conditions.

Seems very likely that Edwards and Hughes want to keep all the control for player recruitment. Established managers will never agree to these demands and will want some kind of veto and hence will not be hired this summer, even if they are available.

I am still not convinced by the idea of going into like Rodgers model again. Klopp was an established manager, won the league , had been to champions league final and knew what winning or managing big club means. It’s a big jump for the managers we are now being linked at. It can all go south very quickly , I am afraid , but if it works out, nothing better than that.

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Who is PSV’s Eindhoven’s current head coach?

As we are looking for head coaches in second-rate leagues, maybe we could also look at the one who is currently first in the Eredivisie, nine points ahead of Feyenoord?

Edit: it’s Peter Bosz, right?

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Not sure, he will leave so soon, He was just appointed last summer, And, it’s Peter Boysz I think.

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I don’t buy into this premise too much…
Klopp was not premiere League proven and I heard doubts from many whether he would cope with the intensity here - he went on to define intensity all over again for the EPL.
Other managers came from weaker leagues and did very well here too. Players as well. We can start nitpicking, and it would be a very interesting discussion, but in general, there’s no such rule.

From the other side of the coin, I also don’t buy into this “Premiere League proven” concept, as it leaves important variables out.

For me the four most important factors is the philosophy of a manager (along with his ability to implement it, and not just write a 200 pages handbook describing it), his personality and charisma (which makes or breaks the environment and the connection to the fans and the image of the club), and of course also the man management (can he bring the best out of players, even beyond the expected). Winning mentality goes along with these.

Everything else follows. Like, if it’s a more difficult league, does it affect any of these four, and how? And then, having these with inferior players, does it then improve with better players, and to what degree? Like if the four factors were all ticked, and the limit with the inferior players/team/league was to go to the Europa League Semis, then world class players and rich club history enables these factors to shine better and aim for EPL and CL?

And all these questions and variables are of course impossible to answer for sure. That’s why for me the most important thing is the core characteristics, these four things.

To me, it seems that Slot ticks these boxes to a fair degree. Not saying that I’m over excited about getting him, and my wish would be Xabi all day, but I wouldn’t dismiss Slot as a viable option with good potential to work very well for us.

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So much rubbish written in the media about new managers. First it was bang on Alonso. Then Amorim was nailed on, now it’s Slott. All from the same source and each quoting each other
.
It’s going to be a bedlam summer.

I thought we all heard of Slot after how well he has done in The Netherlands, not just at Feyernoord.
I think if we are being honest, if Alonso wasn’t a former player he would not be on the pedestal we placed him.
As for the thoughts that because he’s coming from The Eredivison (sp?) he isn’t up to much because of some guys who have not done well after leaving. The circumstances and running of the club they go to is a big factor that determines how well they do, almost as much as their coaching. ETH being a good example.

Let’s not forget that Michael’s, Cruyff, Van Gaal, Hiddink have all come from the Dutch league. Even Advacaat has done well.

Let’s wait until Slot is appointed before disrespecting his achievements to date and convincing ourselves that he’s going to fail.

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It isn’t the Rodgers model.

When Rodgers was first interviewed FSG wanted a DOF to sit above him. Rodgers refused this and said he would only take the job if given full control. After a bit of faffing FSG agreed, and abandoned the DOF model.

However once Rodgers was in post, FSG then set up the ‘Transfer Committee’ to work as a proxy DOF anyway. Rodgers was not happy, and with characteristic maturity refused to play lads the committee brought in.

Rodgers wasn’t hired as, and never saw himself as, a ‘Head Coach’. Ironically, as he was a good coach, and a poor manager.

I’ve never understood to desire for the responsibility of running absolutely everything that seems to run in lots of managers.

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I hope we appoint someone with the same footballing outlook as has been driving the club for a decade. Imagine a different ethos with the players we bought. Can you imagine the Moaning One taking over and setting up Salah and Co to defend for 89 minutes.

It’s very unlikely we’re gonna hit the jackpot and find a guy who ticks all the right boxes, right? We may even go through a spell where we’re sacking 3-4 managers over a 5 year period or something.

So in terms of traits and where they line up on the importance meter what is it exactly fans are looking for or what combination of things?

Is it experience? Is it type of character and what relationships they can build/how they conduct themselves in the public domain? Is it their record in Europe? Is it their record overall and what they’ve won where, Is it the signings they make? Is it style of play? Is it their age, build, looks and sexual preferences?

Klopp came as a multi-time league winner and a CL finalist and will have left with a trophy & as strong title challengers…do we continue down this path thus ruling out the likes of RDZ/O’Neil.

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i noticed you dont mention the type of football required…i guess its easy to please some people…

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Sorry, seems like you didn’t probably read the next line and took it completely out of context.

What I meant there with Rodgers model, was about hiring unproven potential manager without the experience at the highest level.
That’s the thing I am not convinced of right now. Because, I am hopeful with an established manager, this squad may still take the next jump in a year or two.
With potentially unproven managers, there’s a risk of exodus of top players. There will be time taken for manager to understand the squad, the league and the quality of opponent you face where you have to be nearly perfect .
I am unsure if we really need that sort of reset and do we need to take such huge risk right now …as the cost of one bad season without top 4 can be huge in today’s market especially with our limited funding.

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