Job security - arne
- Thread starter LeTallecWiz
- Start date
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This is why even with in danger of ruining Klopp's legacy, I would get him in ASAP if there was any remote chance.
I want to enjoy football again, I don't care if we lose but I miss watching us and loving the press. energy and chaos. I'm sure we can't have it back but we still have brilliant players, great setup, the constants are good, realistically the only variable we can make next is the coach. PS: Never was a big fan of the Hughes or his consutlant boss setup but that I assume will need looking at next. I want to see more your prospects coming through and not signings not focussed on big money, we used to buy 30-40m early 20 somethings and were brilliant at it. If Hughes and Edwards aren't capable of doing that then need to be looked at next.
Well... Now we know how he got three more weeks.
They want Slot to know about the meet.
teachers pet?
Only saying what I heard. When my mate said VVD, Gakpo and... I was expecting him to say Grav, cos I thought it was some weird Dutch thing. But then it was Szob. I dunno. But he wouldn't make it up.
Gakpo functions as the world's best paid chaplain. We did better when we had evangelical loonies.
He obviously did
PAUL JOYCE: Liverpool need Arne Slot to recapture his superpower for improving players
On the day Arne Slot met Liverpool for the first time to discuss becoming their new head coach, he was presented with a dossier.
It was not about the inner workings of the club of which he was earmarked to take charge, or the squad he would inherit. Rather, it was about himself.
Liverpool’s sporting director, Richard Hughes, had compiled a 60-page report on the reasons why they wanted to entice the Feyenoord manager to Anfield once Jürgen Klopp departed at the end of the 2023-24 campaign, and had it to hand when visiting the Dutchman’s home in Zwolle.
Slot had ranked highest of all the candidates Liverpool considered when using a checklist of about 20 metrics, which included a points-above-expectation model, something that Brighton & Hove Albion use to appoint coaches. He also scored highly on his ability to keep players fit.
Another model related to player improvement, and had been developed by Liverpool to assess performances before, during and after a head coach’s reign. Here, it was noted that Slot stood out like a sore thumb. It was one of his “superpowers”.
As Liverpool survey the wreckage of a season that lurches deeper into crisis with every chastening defeat, perhaps they should dust down that case study and hand it back to Slot to remind him of just what he was good at.
For amid the self-doubt that is ravaging his players, he, too, has mislaid the secrets that brought him a Premier League title in his first season at the club, and the Eredivisie crown before that with Feyenoord in 2023.
This is someone, after all, who addressed Liverpool’s defensive structure in an early group meeting at the start of his tenure, presenting the squad with data highlighting how many bodies they should have behind the ball when an opponent is in the final third.
He showed his players videos of Savinho and Phil Foden tracking back into position for Manchester City, then the team he was seeking to overthrow, and everyone seemed to buy into that philosophy.
Contrast that to the shambles now, where organisation and resilience have been abdicated. The implosion in the second half of Wednesday’s 4-1 Champions League defeat at home by PSV Eindhoven served as a stark illustration of how nothing is working as it should at Liverpool right now.
Not the head coach. Certainly not the players. Not the summer transfer dealings in and out of Anfield that were supposed to propel the club to new heights after that second league title in 35 years.
“Everyone is shell-shocked,” said one source. “The players, everyone.”
Recovery and rebuild were not in the script heading into late November and early December, and while Sunday’s visit to West Ham United, followed by back-to-back assignments with top-flight new boys Sunderland and Leeds United, once looked favourable, they are now fraught with danger for a coach who desperately needs positive results.
In many respects, City stand as an example again. This time last year, they were in the midst of an alarming run of one victory in 13 matches in all competitions, leaking goals left, right and centre.
Pep Guardiola, one of Slot’s coaching idols, found a way out of that unprecedented slump and finished third, in part by deploying the energy of Nico O’Reilly and Matheus Nunes as full backs, which made opponents retreat.
It feels timely to go over the reasons Guardiola attributed to what was a remarkable collapse. He explained that injuries meant the defence had rarely trained together since the start of the season and that the fitness of players then became a recurring issue. He pointed out how, after a couple of setbacks, mental fragility meant a group previously impervious to pressure could not “sustain” good spells in games, and added that “players are getting old and the pace that we had, we don’t have”.
Those comments will resonate with Liverpool, at present on a run of three victories in 12 matches, and especially the final point.
This malaise is no longer simply about the adaptation of the new signings (Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak have still only played 267 minutes together) but other, more established players now drained of all confidence or, worse, on a downward slope in their careers.
For arguably the first time since Virgil van Dijk signed in 2018 to help lead the club’s rebirth under Klopp, the centre back cannot solve the problems of everyone around him. Jamie Carragher, the former Liverpool defender, observed that Van Dijk now needed help himself.
Mohamed Salah’s efforts off the ball in the build-up to PSV’s second goal, when he was bypassed with ease, made for difficult viewing. Carragher rightly questioned who else is stepping up. The answer, in short, is no one barring Dominik Szoboszlai.
Slot has been desperate to keep the pressure off all of his players, but it has reached the point where he is defending them and receiving next to nothing in return.
Decisions that were put off previously now need to be embraced. Alexis Mac Allister’s struggles continue, his mobility an issue when he is not taking care in possession. Joe Gomez should play at right back.
As for Salah, well, he does not like being taken off, let alone being taken out of the team, but defeats are more damaging to a manager than a strop from a star player will ever be.
Slot has remained loyal, yet he was the first to point out that things needed to change, recognising even during Liverpool’s march to becoming champions that frailties were evident, most noticeably a lack of ruthlessness.
Bookended by January’s loss to PSV in a Champions League dead-rubber and the latest capitulation, Liverpool have won 21 and lost 17 of 42 games.
Internally, the view remains that Wirtz, Isak, Hugo Ekitike (who have all be on the pitch at the same time for just 61 minutes) and Milos Kerkez will prove themselves to be upgrades, which adds to the pressure on Slot. There is also an acceptance that there was always going to be pain due to a sense of transition exacerbated by the death of striker Diogo Jota.
But no one envisaged results being the worst for 71 years, going back to a season when they were relegated from the top flight.
Indeed, it is pertinent to wonder whether the surgery went far enough in the summer given the issues in midfield and defence that now look obvious. Liverpool recruited technical, sometimes small players right at the time long balls, set pieces and physicality became the Premier League’s hallmark.
Just as it will not have been on Liverpool’s radar to consider succession planning in the dugout, so it had not been the plan to spend in January on new signings.
They obviously like Marc Guéhi, whose proposed £35million move collapsed on deadline day when Crystal Palace could not sign a replacement, but the priority centre-back signing for the summer was Parma’s Giovanni Leoni. The 18-year-old Italian is out for the season after suffering an ACL knee injury on his debut against Southampton in the Carabao Cup.
Talks on Guéhi were initiated on August 10 when the teams met at the Community Shield before going quiet until August 30. The deal was then on and then off again.
Hughes knows Bournemouth’s Antoine Semenyo well from his stint as sporting director of the south coast club and will know that a release clause of £65million in January drops to nearer £50million in the summer window — hence why Bournemouth are looking to create an auction.
For now, though, there are more important issues to tackle. Slot admitted he had struggled to sleep after the PSV defeat, which is understandable given he has so much to solve.
He has openly acknowledged there will be plenty now wondering just how good he is. For now at least, Hughes and Michael Edwards, CEO of football for Fenway Sports Group, which owns Liverpool, believe the answer still lies in that dossier.
On the day Arne Slot met Liverpool for the first time to discuss becoming their new head coach, he was presented with a dossier.
It was not about the inner workings of the club of which he was earmarked to take charge, or the squad he would inherit. Rather, it was about himself.
Liverpool’s sporting director, Richard Hughes, had compiled a 60-page report on the reasons why they wanted to entice the Feyenoord manager to Anfield once Jürgen Klopp departed at the end of the 2023-24 campaign, and had it to hand when visiting the Dutchman’s home in Zwolle.
Slot had ranked highest of all the candidates Liverpool considered when using a checklist of about 20 metrics, which included a points-above-expectation model, something that Brighton & Hove Albion use to appoint coaches. He also scored highly on his ability to keep players fit.
Another model related to player improvement, and had been developed by Liverpool to assess performances before, during and after a head coach’s reign. Here, it was noted that Slot stood out like a sore thumb. It was one of his “superpowers”.
As Liverpool survey the wreckage of a season that lurches deeper into crisis with every chastening defeat, perhaps they should dust down that case study and hand it back to Slot to remind him of just what he was good at.
For amid the self-doubt that is ravaging his players, he, too, has mislaid the secrets that brought him a Premier League title in his first season at the club, and the Eredivisie crown before that with Feyenoord in 2023.
This is someone, after all, who addressed Liverpool’s defensive structure in an early group meeting at the start of his tenure, presenting the squad with data highlighting how many bodies they should have behind the ball when an opponent is in the final third.
He showed his players videos of Savinho and Phil Foden tracking back into position for Manchester City, then the team he was seeking to overthrow, and everyone seemed to buy into that philosophy.
Contrast that to the shambles now, where organisation and resilience have been abdicated. The implosion in the second half of Wednesday’s 4-1 Champions League defeat at home by PSV Eindhoven served as a stark illustration of how nothing is working as it should at Liverpool right now.
Not the head coach. Certainly not the players. Not the summer transfer dealings in and out of Anfield that were supposed to propel the club to new heights after that second league title in 35 years.
“Everyone is shell-shocked,” said one source. “The players, everyone.”
Recovery and rebuild were not in the script heading into late November and early December, and while Sunday’s visit to West Ham United, followed by back-to-back assignments with top-flight new boys Sunderland and Leeds United, once looked favourable, they are now fraught with danger for a coach who desperately needs positive results.
In many respects, City stand as an example again. This time last year, they were in the midst of an alarming run of one victory in 13 matches in all competitions, leaking goals left, right and centre.
Pep Guardiola, one of Slot’s coaching idols, found a way out of that unprecedented slump and finished third, in part by deploying the energy of Nico O’Reilly and Matheus Nunes as full backs, which made opponents retreat.
It feels timely to go over the reasons Guardiola attributed to what was a remarkable collapse. He explained that injuries meant the defence had rarely trained together since the start of the season and that the fitness of players then became a recurring issue. He pointed out how, after a couple of setbacks, mental fragility meant a group previously impervious to pressure could not “sustain” good spells in games, and added that “players are getting old and the pace that we had, we don’t have”.
Those comments will resonate with Liverpool, at present on a run of three victories in 12 matches, and especially the final point.
This malaise is no longer simply about the adaptation of the new signings (Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak have still only played 267 minutes together) but other, more established players now drained of all confidence or, worse, on a downward slope in their careers.
For arguably the first time since Virgil van Dijk signed in 2018 to help lead the club’s rebirth under Klopp, the centre back cannot solve the problems of everyone around him. Jamie Carragher, the former Liverpool defender, observed that Van Dijk now needed help himself.
Mohamed Salah’s efforts off the ball in the build-up to PSV’s second goal, when he was bypassed with ease, made for difficult viewing. Carragher rightly questioned who else is stepping up. The answer, in short, is no one barring Dominik Szoboszlai.
Slot has been desperate to keep the pressure off all of his players, but it has reached the point where he is defending them and receiving next to nothing in return.
Decisions that were put off previously now need to be embraced. Alexis Mac Allister’s struggles continue, his mobility an issue when he is not taking care in possession. Joe Gomez should play at right back.
As for Salah, well, he does not like being taken off, let alone being taken out of the team, but defeats are more damaging to a manager than a strop from a star player will ever be.
Slot has remained loyal, yet he was the first to point out that things needed to change, recognising even during Liverpool’s march to becoming champions that frailties were evident, most noticeably a lack of ruthlessness.
Bookended by January’s loss to PSV in a Champions League dead-rubber and the latest capitulation, Liverpool have won 21 and lost 17 of 42 games.
Internally, the view remains that Wirtz, Isak, Hugo Ekitike (who have all be on the pitch at the same time for just 61 minutes) and Milos Kerkez will prove themselves to be upgrades, which adds to the pressure on Slot. There is also an acceptance that there was always going to be pain due to a sense of transition exacerbated by the death of striker Diogo Jota.
But no one envisaged results being the worst for 71 years, going back to a season when they were relegated from the top flight.
Indeed, it is pertinent to wonder whether the surgery went far enough in the summer given the issues in midfield and defence that now look obvious. Liverpool recruited technical, sometimes small players right at the time long balls, set pieces and physicality became the Premier League’s hallmark.
Just as it will not have been on Liverpool’s radar to consider succession planning in the dugout, so it had not been the plan to spend in January on new signings.
They obviously like Marc Guéhi, whose proposed £35million move collapsed on deadline day when Crystal Palace could not sign a replacement, but the priority centre-back signing for the summer was Parma’s Giovanni Leoni. The 18-year-old Italian is out for the season after suffering an ACL knee injury on his debut against Southampton in the Carabao Cup.
Talks on Guéhi were initiated on August 10 when the teams met at the Community Shield before going quiet until August 30. The deal was then on and then off again.
Hughes knows Bournemouth’s Antoine Semenyo well from his stint as sporting director of the south coast club and will know that a release clause of £65million in January drops to nearer £50million in the summer window — hence why Bournemouth are looking to create an auction.
For now, though, there are more important issues to tackle. Slot admitted he had struggled to sleep after the PSV defeat, which is understandable given he has so much to solve.
He has openly acknowledged there will be plenty now wondering just how good he is. For now at least, Hughes and Michael Edwards, CEO of football for Fenway Sports Group, which owns Liverpool, believe the answer still lies in that dossier.
