The side group saw all this coming. Ahead of the curve as usual
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We had our list of potential new managers drawn up 6 weeks ago
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Tired of speaking about it.
He flew to the sun.
Wayne lineker is some boyo - gets Slot on the bumble bees and hard liquor, ruins Liverpools season and then decides to go sober himself
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Following an icon like Coach Klopp was always going to be a club in transition. Coach Slot was like Coach Dessie tagging another one on to former presidential hopeful Coach Gavin.
I was walking down 5th Avenue last week and Luis Diaz adorned the Adidas storefront. Itâs hard replace that sort of global superstar
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Dessie didnât win the same amount of championships as Jim though.
Slot is an absolute chancer who got lucky with the team he stole off Klopp, get that fool out before he relegates them
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You had a post during the summer predicting that all these expensive signings wouldnât work out for Liverpool and as itâs transpired youâve been proven dead right. It was a fabulous call by you in hindsight.
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Leeds mark 2 innit.
The famed transfer committee were viewed as being incredibly shrewd last season for finding Slot to succeed Klopp. During the summer the talk was that theyâd be in contact with Ekitike, Wirtz etc. for months and that Slot had detailed plans of how theyâd all dovetail together. Itâs amazing how quickly the narrative can change.
Last seasonâs narrative:
⢠Slot is a calmer presence on the sideline than Klopp and that transmits to the players. Szoboslai did an interview where he was perceived to have said as much. He trusts the plan essentially.
⢠Slotâs a genius for putting Gravenberch cdm.
⢠The less physically intense approach is conserving energy and helping reduce the injury load. Slotâs fitness coaches he brought from Feyenoord are experts here.
⢠Heâs giving Salah more of a free role and itâs paying dividends. Heâs not wasting energy tracking back.
⢠The players have really bought into his approach. Slot is portrayed as a genius for watching back the previous seasons training sessions and picking up minor details to improve. Slot is all about the details.
⢠The players and management are smart to get the partying and celebrating out of the way in April/early May. Theyâll be refocused by next August.
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Without the financial ruin Iâd imagine. The owners are prudent enough.
Kloppâs stock has risen 10 fold.
He built the title winning team. The nerds destroyed it.
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They said City bought the league.
They said it was easy.
Youâd have to have massive respect for how City do their business when you see how the likes of Liverpool, Spurs, United et al have splurged so badly.
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A lot of that is largely true. If Slot gets sacked next weekend he still ultimately has to be judged as a success because heâs won a league title.
I feel sorry for him because some of the problems are beyond his control. It wasnât his fault Trent wanted to leave. It wasnât his fault a much loved player died. A lot of transfer business now seems to be beyond the managerâs control.
Slot succeeded last season probably mainly because occasionally a change is as good as a rest. Salahâs superb form was surely affected by him playing for a contract. He didnât get to sign anybody, it was Kloppâs team. He got a bit lucky that Abu Dhabi went off the boil and Arsenal werenât quite at it. In some ways he acted like a glorified caretaker manager. There was immense knowhow within that Liverpool team. He didnât change much apart from the Gravenberch move which was a great success.
The esteemed football writer Jonathan Wilson frequently mentions how Rinus Michels left the Ajax team he had built after they won their first European Cup. The Ajax players found this liberating as Kovacs brought a more relaxed approach compared to the regimentation of Michels and they went on to win two more European Cups under Kovacs but even by the time of the third European Cup, things were beginning to disintegrate, and they properly disintegrated after that.
Slot very much reminds me of that - that his more relaxed personality suited Liverpool well in the short term, but not long term. Sometimes a new manager can be a short term facilitator but the skills needed in the longer term are different.
Ultimately success as a football manager comes back to personality. You have to have a personality that players fear, respect and worship in equal measure. You can only have that if the players believe you are a football savant. The personality side is even more important than the tactical side. You canât succeed on being a technocrat alone. You used to be able to go quite far in management on personality alone but thatâs gone.
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We go again.
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Are the likes of Iraola or Glassner inherently better than Slot? Outside of Klopp or Alonso I think any move to replace Slot would be a complete shot in the dark. The much vaunted transfer committee/laptop nerds have lost some of their lustre. In reality they were ridiculed until Klopp came along in 2015 and turned everything bar Naby lad and Darwin into a silk purse.
Klopp wonât come back with Mickey Edwards there.
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He said he had a good relationship with Edwards in that Diary of a CEO podcast but realistically he was just being diplomatic. If it came down to it Iâd much rather have Klopp than Edwards. The former made the latterâs reputation.
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When the next great manager appears, you generally donât have to ask if theyâre any use, itâs obvious.
Alonso is the first manager to emerge in the game worldwide to have a sort of aura of greatness about him since Klopp emerged 11 or 12 years previously, but itâs a different kind of aura. Yet Real Madrid could ruin him. Liverpool always seemed a far better fit for Alonso.
Neither Iraola nor Glasner have anywhere near that sort of aura.
Bielsa had the aura. Martin OâNeill had it especially when he went to Celtic. Mourinho had it. Guardiola had it. Jack Charlton had it.
You can see why Luis Enrique has managed to turn PSG from a rabble into world beaters. You can see immediately. He was a top level footballer, heâd managed maybe the most dominant Barcelona team of all, and he has that face. If youâre a player, you instinctively respect and worship that man with that face with that expression.
The personality thing is the stumbling block for Iraola and Glasner. Theyâre clearly excellent coaches but do they have the cojones to deal with the Liverpool job? Theyâre able to work away at small clubs without a huge amount of media attention and with understanding supporters.
Certain managers become typecast as managers of small teams and as soon as they move to a big team, their limitations become apparent. They donât have the authority. Nuno Espirito Santo and Thomas Frank are good coaches but even Spurs seemed/seems too big a job for them.
Even with Unai Emery, who has a very good track record as a manager, heâs become sort of typecast as a manager who is suited to good teams who are slightly below the top level.
Without knowing that much about Simone Inzaghi Iâd wager he has the necessary cojones for one of the very top jobs in football, ie a Real Madrid, a Liverpool or a Manchester United (Barcelona is different, I couldnât see him being a fit for there) but heâs fucked off to Saudi Arabia.
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