It’s not his job!
It was never Jürgen’s job to begin with either. I don’t understand why people keep thinking it is. He might have been given a final shortlist to pick from, but scouting a player and trying to find one has not been the manager’s job in a long time.
MORE TOYS!!! WE DIDN’T WIN THE TRANSFER WINDOW!!!
From the man himself:
"I know people sometimes question this because they haven’t seen us doing a lot in the transfer market in the summer and now in the winter as well. There’s a reason for that - because we’re happy with the squad.
“But I do know we’re definitely working on strengthening in the summer.”
FAKE NEWS! He’s obviously being held hostage by the big bad FSG! You can see him blink twice!
We don’t even truly know how much input he has - not that he would not have any, but ‘spot a player’ very much sounds like something outside his role. I strongly suspect his role is much more along the lines of ‘I want to see better dribble penetration from the left side of the attack’, and other people are responsible for identifying possibilities.
I duplicated your point here - but the answer to this is really a function of the perverse English footy mentality that refuses to consider other management structures as genuine, wants the cult of personality and identification of the club with one man, and hangs every failure on ‘the gaffer’. You see it repeatedly in media coverage where a club and a last name are used as virtual synonyms, unless the last name is on his way to getting fired soon.
Pretty sure the manager would have some say in defining a brief in the type of player he needs or wants. Also a say in identifying areas of weakness in the squad that need addressing.
Big difference for us I think is that it doesnt all come from one person anymore.
I think it takes a great deal of maturity from a manager not to bring in ‘his players’, usually ones he already knows, as a comfort blanket when taking over a new club - especially if the resources are potentially there. Remember early Rodgers? I am still not that excited by Borini, as it turns out. The reality of the situation that Slot faced was he already had a whole list of new players to understand - adding 1-2 would just add more complications unless there was something glaringly obvious. Doesn’t look like there was.
The corollary is that no matter how the next three months play out, he should have a very refined sense of what he wants to add to his options.
Exactly - not his job to look at hundreds of hours of video and live play of left-footed attacking players who can attack the defence with a dribble. A team does that, assesses options - he comes back in the process when there is a shortlist.
Do not google!
Man United buy a new centre back or two every year for about a decade and still have a shit defence.
Liverpool buy a centre back about once every three to four years and consistently challenge for top honours.
And people want our owners to spend like United’s do because…?
We’ll get at least seven years out of the £75m we spent on one of the best centre backs of all time. They’re on a constant carousel of buying and selling the likes of Blind, Rojo, Lindelof, Bailly, Maguire, a spent Varane, Martinez the 8th dwarf, the Dutch Maguire and a 46 year old Johnny Evans.
When you constantly replace dross with more dross that spending really adds up but it doesn’t get you anywhere.
Apologies, that may be a basketball-ism. Is there a footy term for it, like ‘spotted dick’ or something?
It’s been 15 years, we don’t need to pretend to not know how these guys operate and we know until Virg came along, none of this happened…we were a pipe dream away.
The season Virg was out for 7-8 months, we struggled and suffered as a result…these are the times which fans look to the owners, the board… for a response - in a moment of a crisis, to get back on track so we can push on with our goals. It never came. Klopp had no option but to play 2 inexperienced players to miraculously sneak back into the top 4.
Fans are in for a real shock if they think we can still compete for trophies post Mo and Virg & carry on the way we are.
We struggled then to the degree we did in large part because our two other CBs also went down with injuries at the same time. We looked like we stabilized by Christmas, but then our worse period came in the period right after when Matip suffered his season ending injury in our last game in January, leaving no time in the window to do anything more than the emergency imperfect singings of Kabak and Davies (who?)
So in short, they spent big when needed on Virg and he helped us take a big leap forward. But when he was injured we weren’t as good. And if/when he leaves we’ll need to spend big to replace him but you don’t think we will despite having done just that to bring him in initially?
The reason we can carry on as we are is we buy good players for the long term rather than constantly buying players to replace ones we bought 2-3 seasons ago. When things need doing there’s always been money to spend but it’s nearly always done with a long term perspective not for a short term fix. I struggle to see how that’s a bad thing given the countless other clubs who do the opposite and get worse results from doing so.
Reading this, you’d almost think we are nearing the end of January. Oh wait… 
I have a different view on this: they took time to convince Edwards to come back to the club, but finally managed to do it. They now have their man, who then chose the SD he thought was going to be the best appointee for that role.
After that, their first role was to identify the new manager, and bring in someone competent who could build on Klopp’s legacy. I think that we can all agree by now that they have done a good job on that key appointment.
Now, on the new players. Klopp brought in a lot of players in the summer before he departed. Last season, his main job was to integrate these players and make a coherent squad out of them. As we can see now, he succeeded pretty well with that, and Slot has been able to make the most of a deep, very balanced squad.
Of course, looking at individuals, we can always discuss whether Nunez or some other player doesn’t live up to the initial hype around him. But looking at the squad as a collective, the facts are there: we have by far the best attack in the league, the joint-best defence, and we are top of the league.
For me, the most crucial aspect of the owners’ job is to put in place a good structure above the manager and his squad. From what we can see so far, they have done their job, and quite well. Then, they’ll have to put money in place to buy new players in the summer, but I’m quite sure that Edwards and Hughes have already a clear plan about that. Next summer will be interesting indeed.
Until then, let’s hope that Slot and his squad can give us nr. 20 come May, fingers crossed! 
We have also repeatedly brought in players for the long term who didn’t seem to fill an immediate need at the time, and those singings have repeatedly be seen with skepticism and frustration (why are spending money on this when we need an x?) form a sizeable/vocal section of the fanbase. People will outright reject this now, but even Mo’s signing was greeted like this with lots of people not seeing why we’d spend a club record fee when we already had a world class front 3 and getting wound up how it would stop us buying the DM (or inset other transfer priority) we needed.
There is always room for questions about the strategy and or implementation, but it really feels like lots of fans just want to spend money to demonstrate seriousness. But more than that, some fans like playing at being DoF and think the club isnt being serious if doesnt match the exact implementation plan imagined in their head.
The only reason I remember who that is that for a while I had bookmarked his transfer page so it was always the first page I landed on when I visited the forum.
Mind you, I’m still not sure what he looks like.
All very true.
I like a transfer as much as anyone and always think there’s room for one more. But I also understand I’m sat at home reading books written by one of the very clever people the club employed to help make us better at transfers than almost any other elite club and that I’m not nearly smart enough to even be sat in a room with these people, let alone think I know better.
I’ve yet to see anyone from within the club suggest ownership backing has been an issue for them. In fact, the only negative rumblings recently have been about the club moving away from the successful structure that was put in place and perhaps letting Klopp have too much influence. An influence that has been suggested to be linked to some of the poorer decisions around contract renewals, not moving players on at the right time and spending a record amount on a forward that he was told wasn’t a great fit and that has flattered to deceive since his arrival.
Yes, i think he made a point of this before, explaining how closely he worked with the recruitment team in holland to help them understand what exactly he wanted and why. They pretty much did the rest.
I assume he is doing the same here.