Agreed. But we’re not professional football strategists, are we?
Just because we don’t know what the plan is, doesn’t mean there isn’t one.
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You need to check who you are replying to and apologise …as they are 
So it was more of a dick swigging message to the rest of the league to say “Hey, look who’s part of the big boy spending now” insert awful waving emoji as opposed to looking out for the best interest of the team?
I don’t think it’s inconceivable to think there’s been a misalignment somewhere between management and senior recruitment over which direction the club should be heading in.
You don’t have a clear plan for someone like Wirtz, then decide one week you’ll shunt him to the left, another to the right, sticking him on the bench for a few weeks before bringing him back in the 10 role. It’s ludicrous.
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I haven’t actually watched too much of other teams so far this season, but I keep hearing that the emphasis is shifting. It’s well documented the Arse have a good record on set-pieces - and it seems like the game as a whole might be starting to shift a bit?
Thats exactly how it felt imo, especially given how city made a statement on how “they couldnt compete” …we all know thats bollocks as we are still waiting to hear that nothing will be done with the charges, and then it was between us an bayern who despite being the biggest team in Germany and one of the true heavyweights of Europe, lost out to us and it gave us an arrogance again imo that is not us.
Virgil did exactly the same thing!
I like all the changes we made. Ideally it would have been stretched out a bit, but the circumstances came together for what we did and I’ve no problem with any of it.
We are short at centre back due to season ending injury and the Guehi deal falling through. And some other injuries and form are costing us. I feel in addition to that Slot is caught between two stools, and he would be better advised to go with his new attacking talent, although there are some legit reasons why that hasn’t fully been unleashed yet.
All in all I think it will be a bit of a transition season. Top four and if it is clicking by then, anything is possible at the business end of the CL.
Then complete the building of the new side with probably two CB, a Mo Salah replacement, and another defensive midfielder to compete / work with Grav.
Last season was ahead of schedule. This season is behind schedule. All in all we will have a title winning season and probably a transition season.
Like all reds I want us to snap out of the funk we are in asap.
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The thinking behind bringing Wirtz in was sound, but how he would be actually integrated seems to have been left up in the air. Deployed as a member of the front 3 would mean that someone out of Gakpo, Ekitike, Isak and Salah is going to miss out. Deployed in midfield would mean that we instantly get weaker defensively and also that one of Mac Allister, Gravenberch and Szoboszlai would get dropped. There just isn’t a clear and easy solution for Wirtz’s place and it was always obvious to anyone looking. We all thought that there was a plan in place, we eagerly anticipated to see what that would be, but the season started, went to shit and we still don’t know what that is.
As for teams focusing on set pieces and long balls, we had no problem defending them under Klopp and last season as well. The thing is that over the summer, we’ve become terrible at them. Even now, we’re winning a lot of headers, but we are so poorly positioned and so tame in challenges that we inevitably lose the second ball. We haven’t suddenly become a team that can’t defend long balls and set pieces because we don’t have the players for it; we can’t defend them because organisation and discipline have gone out the window and that’s always the sign of a poorly coached team.
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We can say all about Darwin Nunez finishing has left wanting, but he always puts in everything to make sure he gets back to help the defending (and I remember many match commentaries that he headed the balls out from opposition corners). We are not getting that with the current crop yet.
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I think Darwin was a very hardworking player and you’re spot on! I still don’t think anyone would say that replacing him with the 2nd most deadly striker in the league was anything other than a good thing.
This plan here sounds a bit like playing football manager.
I believed we had a plan to have Wirtz, Gakpo and Salah playing together with a central forward ie the Spain formation. That made every deal up until Ekitike make sense. I also give them credit for Leoni and can overlook missing out on Guehi, which is a deal similar to Minamino where the value was so good we had to take it not really because he fits (he plays in a back 3, never seen his recovery pace or watch him in a high line). Nobody also expected Leoni got unlucky like that.
However, Frimpongs and Mama are questionable purchases regarding how they fit the way we play, and Isak is a Chelsea kind of a deal. At least Caicedo could play right away, while we accepted to lose out 6 months with Isak’s lack of fitness. At that price, not only Isak is expected to deliver, but the total understanding is that there is a plan to fit him in. So far Isak and Wirtz’s performance and output ve shown none of that. Isak’s best game was actually the Atletico match when he just arrived and led the press effectively, he’s gone missing just to wait to make a run behind since then.
It really was not the additions but the lack of a plan that worries me. This can’t all be blamed on Salah’s form or Konate wants away etc
The comparison between what we have now and what went just before is not quite fair. The newbies are not integrated yet, and also there are fitness issues with one or two. Let’s see what becomes of them.
The comp is against the best of what previous players brought.
We’ve got some teething problems, but I think they will overcome and get better as we go, definitely surpassing wha the likes of Darwin Nunez brought, much as I really liked he fella.
its actually something youll never know the answer to as well, if that makes you feel better…
maybe a massive upheaval disrupts this season but sees a much needed revamp take place in one window, not four…maybe we were never destined for success this season and decided to ‘rip the bandaid off’ in one go…
thing is, we’ll never know, and millions of people sagely proferring knowledge to the counter, saying they ‘knew’ we got it wrong is just the sound of shit dribbling out of thier mouth
what we can know though, is that with the staff that has been brought in, we still dont seem to have a plan with how to utilise, or, maybe more pertinantly, Slot has one foot in each field…
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I think Slot has one foot in each field, or the idiom I used was caught between two stools.
There are legitimate reasons for that. Isak arrived without a preseason in him, so we have been building up his fitness and now he has a groin strain.
Wirtz hasn’t hit the ground running and while he is obviously a very talented player, we need to work out how to make him the main playmaker while keeping some balance to the team.
Frimpong has been injured.
Kerkez hasn’t clicked positionally with Van Dijk.
Ekitike has been the best of the bunch for the newbies so far, but even his progress was disrupted by the silly red card he got for taking off his shirt.
Leoni looked mature beyond his years in the one game we saw, but then a season ending injury hit. Very unlucky.
So…
With the newbies not quite clicking yet, Slot has not been as emboldened as he might to make the switch in that direction. So he persists with Salah, for example, who has been some way below his best. If the others were up to speed the case for benching Salah is stronger, but for various reasons they are not there yet.
I’m a patient fella and I think the new thing will emerge, but there are some teething problems. As for Isak, I see Newcastle’s hand in that one too. They were talking silly money, 150M, and they got nowhere near that, but what they did make sure they did was drag a situation out to hand us a player who won’t be coming good for us until half way through the season.
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Do you really think that this club would do that?
Really?
These moments are always grim on fan communities. The results are one thing, but the thing that really sends the conversation in to the realms of fantasy are people’s desire to ascribe the very worst motivations, intentions and incompetencies on the manager, and whoever else wonders into range.
I remember it with Rafa, with Kenny, with Rodgers, and even on occasions with Jurgen.
It’s not enough to say something didn’t work, and someone has been a bit shit at their job. It has to be more than that - they are lazy, incompetent, arrogant, complacent, they haven’t got a plan, they are too ruthless. They are too loyal. They are shitting on their arse twiddling their thumbs.
All shouted from a position of absolute ignorance, without a clue what the rationale was behind the decisions made.
And by the way, do you mean Dick swinging? Dick swigging would be something else entirely.
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Even beyond that there was a sense of whether it was the right move to push ahead with at that stage of the window given the moves we had already made questions about how it was all going to fit together. I know as much as a lot of fans loved the ride of winning the transfer window and being pulled along in unchartered territory there were definitely some who thought there was almost a karmic payment that would have to be paid for breaking the transfer record twice in one window, even more so after having already bought Hugo.
I think there was also another large category who didnt understand it, probably wouldnt have pushed for it if the decision was their, but felt everyone involved had earned a benefit of the doubt. I think without baseline level of trust in the process what reservations there were among the people here would have come out in greater dissatisfaction. But also to be clear, the “fuck this guy and spend the money on a proper CB” faction was not exactly unrepresented.
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Which would have left us in an even worse position, as by that point Nunez, Jota and Diaz were already gone.
We obviously thought we had another centre back done.
One the things I havent seen anyone reconcile is that everyone is talking Slot’s desire to gain even more control of games with the way we play. So you would have thought that he would have seen eye to eye with carra on his criticism of our Bournemouth performance, but he didnt. And as that has continued to come up as the season progressed Slot doubled down on things like entertainment value and appreciating seeing our players want to attack. That is a very confusing response to the various criticisms about the attitude we’ve displayed in lots of our games about the way we want to bomb forward given the accepted wisdom of the goal for this evolution of the team was.
So how does that relate to the bit of your post I quoted? Several of the set piece goals we’ve conceded have seen players transition into counter attacking well before the situation was adequately defended. Look at Maguire’s winner - in addition to Ibou who was always going to be expected to try to win the header, there were two other players in positions who would have been expected to stand their ground and box out Maguire making it difficult for him to get up and make good contact with it, but they were t there by the time the ball reached him. Instead they just cleared the box leaving potential goal scorers behind them like they were expecting someone else to do their defending for them while they were getting into a position from which we could launch a counter.