Right, so after all of the disappointment it still seems that we’re sticking with Arne at least till the end of the season. Instead of putting so much disrespect on him, as I’ve seen in the last weeks, let’s remember his first season success. I will be honest with you guys, I secretly doubted us that last season and then I was delighted with the result, even though did not truly enjoy the style of play. Then comes the record breaking transfer window and the heartbreaking season. So the question I’m asking you lads is, how did it all go to hell so quickly? We truly were a disappointment from the start of the season, even though we won the first couple of games…
by ResidentFeature5918
29 Comments
He was an excellent ‘continuity’ choice for last season. But this season’s challenges – some self-inflicted, others out of his control – have shown his limitations. I don’t dislike the guy personally and he’ll have more success in his future for sure, but his time at Liverpool is up.
we’re just recycling these questions now, i think we’re all fully aware of what has happened.
When he decided it was acceptable to go get drunk in Ibiza and after binning off the cup game in January.
Imagine Pep spending the last weeks of his Centurion season getting pissed up in Spain and deciding to throw away cup competitions…
It wouldn’t happen because unlike Slot he is a trophy hungry competitor who demands perfection and works to get it.
Well the death of a friend and close work colleague certainly did not help anyone!
We bought poorly in the summer, in terms of squad building. We didn’t address key weaknesses whereas we splurged on vanity signings.
It started last year. After the title was confirm we went to shit. A small drop off was to be tolerated but standards should have been kept higher.
Then the death of Jota ABSOLUTELY ruptured there now and the dressing room. All those new players coming in to what should have been a joyous and buoyant dressing room suddenly were walking in to a funereal mood. It would have been impossible to integrate or to understand. Yes we should still have done better but it can’t be understated how much impact this would have old on the old guard and the new players.
We’re not getting better, if anything we’re getting worse
Ultimately I think it’s 2 reasons that had us drop *this* much.
1. We moved further away from Klopp’s style. Slot was wise enough in his first season to not transition too quickly from the only thing we knew for the past 10 years. Mind you, by March a year ago we were already heading into our current predicament – fans were glossing over it as the lads being on holiday but I was concerned even then personally, there were chinks in the armour.
2. Salah dropped off, massively. Even when I rated Slot as a class coach, I still believed last year was a carry job. He was involved in over half of our league goals, that’s beyond ridiculous. And that’s only direct G+A, he did plenty more as we all remember.
Our first season was not Slot ball.
It was Klopp ball with more emphasis on possession. The team was still very high-pressing and we still played “vertical football”.
He let standards slip last season when we took the foot off the gas and never got the mentality back. All the work Klopp built up over a decade was unravelled
Managing crisis is a different skillset. When things go very wrong how do you cope? It’s a different question.
Combination of many things:
1. Distress after Jota’s death
2. Change of players
3. Some players’ loss in form
4. Poor tactics
5. Poor man-management
6. Slot’s tactics have been found out
As the elders say – don’t let success get into your head.
It started as soon as he tried to implement his own style and move away from Klopp’s.
Whenever something goes wrong, you have to ask what changed. So, let’s compare Arne’s first season to the second. We should also consider new management (of any kind) 101.
New management 101 is about not changing things immediately. You come in, you stay quiet and you learn. Allow things to carry on as they are whilst you get to know people, teams and processes. Effectively, season 1 was still Klopp’s team and mindset. It was a well oiled machine that the team knew what they were doing.
Season 2 changed that. We saw a lot of new players enter the team and we saw a drastic change in tactics. Over time, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that some doubt started creeping into the players and backroom about those tactics. Very early on we could see things were not picking up where they left off in the prior season. And a negative mindset spreads and increases like wildfire. We also lost Lijnders.
So now we find ourselves in a place where we still have a lot of players learning each other, a negative mindset in the team that is getting harder to extinguish as poor results keep coming, and a manager who has tied to stamp his mark and will not accept that it’s failing, so continues to die on the hill.
It’s a shame, but it will pass. The players, for the most part, are still exceptional. Getting them to work together in the right way, the right formation, positions and tactics seems to be where it’s falling down right now. But for it to pass, I honestly believe we need to see either a huge change in Arne’s attitude (stop dying on the hill and radically change what he is doing), or he needs to go and we get Alonso in. Or, and I’ll throw this in, we make Klopp a return deal he cannot refuse!!! (I can hope, right?)
Where it went wrong?
A truly unsuitable transfer window where we gave up any ability to be dangerous in the wide areas for high-quality players in the middle. Then to compound the issue we burned through any squad depth by shifting off quality young players (particularly Quansah baffles me).
Then when the season got underway and the team’s shortfalls became apparent, Slot has responded with the wrong tactics at the wrong time and often looks desperate, rather than calculated.
Lots of contributing factors. Gutted the squad of depth, poor transfer strategy spending a lot but having shallow depth, Salah dropoff, tragedy, poor tactics, unable to adapt to game state, unable to positively change game with tactics/subs, injuries a bigger issue due to squad depth, star striker unfit and then fractures leg, our once commanding captain giving away penalties, silly mistakes and seemingly unable to lead on the pitch, poor mentality….the list goes on.
Selling Diaz was the worst decision made. I understand we needed money to balance our spending, but he was so vital on the left side for our attack last season. And of course losing Jota 🙁
A complete mix of things. Jotas death and lack of a proper preseason ( though given the circumstances i don’t think there was much anyone could do about this). Too many players leaving & too many coming in without really strengthening the squad. Salah form dropping off and his subsequent kickoff. Long term injuries to Isak, Leoni, Bradley etc. New players taking a while to settle into the team & the physicality of the league. Teams in PL playing a different style of football and Liverpool unable to deal with it.
Slot said many times himself in his first season that he didn’t want to mess with Klopp’s system too much, just a few tweaks.
Then comes the big spend and his second season where he has implemented his style, Slotball, and it does not suit the club or the league. It’s a very difficult watch.
He’s also had to deal with the loss of Jota (RIP), Salah and VVD’s massive drop off (which comes after their new mega contract renewals which i believe plays a part), Salah’s media outbursts and a resurgence of Arsenal and City.
His man management is lacking and though he tries he does not have a natural charisma or personality to deal with players and get them to run through the proverbial wall.
I think there’s also a commitment issue on his part, his family never moved over, he doesn’t see the UK as his home and he can’t wait to get back the NL any chance he gets (after the Brighton game he was straight to the airport). This also led to him giving the players 3 days off before the Forrest and West Ham games so he could go home for a couple of days – which leads to one of the biggest issues – his controlled decline of fitness. The players are nowhere near fit enough, they’ve lost their drive, intensity and stamina, Chiesa was even sent home from Italy for being unfit.
It seems in one season he has undone all of Klopp’s work and the players and fans don’t like it, the belief has gone and it’s all spiralling down toilet and he can’t stop it.
That’s my take anyways.
IMO it’s the perfect storm of a few things. Standards dropping has been mentioned. Training methods aren’t up to scratch, fitness levels have dropped. Van Bronkhorst as assistant isn’t the right man. Players losing a step. Jota’s death.
Many things went wrong at the same time
1. selling diaz
2. isak injury
3. too many new people and it took for them to settle
4. salah misfiring as we were too dependent on him
5. unfortunately lost jota who is a great asset
6. alission injured good half of season
7. not giving enough chances to chiesa who is actually doing well
8. missing trent’s crossings
9. konate out of form
When Diogo Jota died.
Grief is weird and messy and complicated. It hangs around for years, it hides in the smallest things and hits you out of nowhere.
Like, as fans, we all felt the pain of losing someone on our team who was irreplaceable and brilliant and so young and hopeful. But that’s gonna be a drop in the ocean compared to what Jota’s teammates and his friends and family went through. It takes literally years to get over losing someone. People grieve on their own timelines. Anyone who thought we’d have a normal season and could hold everything to normal standards after something so tragic and so painful happened needs to reality check tbh.
YNWA Diogo J, you’ll always be missed and loved at Anfield ❤️
Number of reasons. Too much change/transfers in one short timeframe leaving no time for players to settle, although ironically not enough change as they’re still short in areas. So you could say the transition needed was too big and is unfinished. Maybe a lack of foresight has led them to this, not predicting an aging squad who need a massive overhaul in such a short time.
Then there’s the lack of depth in the squad, players such as Origi, Minamino, Oxlade Chamberlain, Shaqiri where class squad players and could come off the bench with little drop off on quality.
Then there’s the lack of leadership with Milner and Henderson leaving and the likes of players such as Robertson not playing as much and Fabinho’s and Mane’s who had huge mentality’s.
Then you have a young manger who has been successful but never navigated a rough patch in his short career before. I hoped if he would have navigated it this season and come out the other side he would have been better for it. However, it doesn’t seem the case unfortunately.
Throw all that together and you get what happened this season. Liverpool need to go back into the transfer market in the summer and continue to rebuild from last summer. The question is, do the club trust Slot is the man to continue with that or do they go with someone else?
Our summer recruitment has moved us further away from the high pressing style we’ve had for yonks, and I think as part of that we’ve transitioned into this slow plodding style of footy at the same time the rest of the league has focused on physicality and hard running. We regularly get done in the way we would’ve done teams over many times under Klopp.
I think certain players have lost a level due to their age, Salah being the obvious one. Our best player from last year looks a shadow of himself, and I don’t think that can be put entirely down to Slot. We essentially play with two wingers who aren’t really blessed with pace, when in previous years we had it in abundance. Jota’s death also would’ve had an impact on players.
Ultimately I think the squad has dropped a level as a whole, and the managers adaption to that hasn’t been good. I do, however, think the recruitment side of things has let him down. There’s been plenty of games where I’ve thought he needs to change something here, and then you look at the bench and it’s dreadful. People have criticised Gakpo (rightly and wrongly at times), but the reality is the managers main alternative to him has been a 17 year old.
One of our players, a great friend to the whole dressing room, died.
New players came into a grieving group, not the easiest place to start making relationships. Then results started slipping, and most of the key players ARE STILL GRIEVING.
Losing a colleague can be really hard at a normal workplace. When you are facing elite competition every week, who all want a crack at the champions, it is not hard to see why things have gone like this.
A decade down the line, when all these guys come out with memoires etc., people might finally realise just how big of a deal this was.
Evidently, the decline started before the PSG game. We were well ahead in the league and had the momentum before that. Yes, the players had the intensity from the Klopp/Pep training system while Slot made necessary tweaks, unleashing Gravenberch as the deep-lying playmaker he was clamouring to be. Diaz and Salah were wreaking havoc on both wings. It all clicked then.
Fast forward a year, we lost 3 regular frontmen and the incoming ones haven’t clicked yet. Salah’s drop off was unexpected and the backline has been exposed too often with little protection from what seems like midfielders with little defensive nous. The end result of having so little threat upfront, even with a decent midfield, is that we can’t close off games. Adding to that a new Slot system that is clearly not working on all fronts, it looks like a bad season.
Everyone seems to think they know what’s gone wrong. Unbelievable. So many factors can affect a team, but it’s unfair to compare to last year’s unexpected success when the others were floundering.
But it’s not the worst season I’ve seen. I’ve endured worse. So many redditors are losing their minds over this season. Please. It’s not worth it. Let the club sort it out.
What happened to the believers? Have faith in the club you so dearly love.
We lost Diaz, Jota, Darwin. Those 3 pressed like their life depended on it. No amount of coaching or training can create that in someone. Hugo, Wirtz and Salah just don’t have that.
That, and Virgil has been at the scene of the crime a little too often this year.
Plus our squad is too small and you can see it in the end of games. Guys legs are gone. Except Dom.
Ok here we go:
Klopp’s ingrained fitness and intensity combined with a fresh new manager bounce and Man City/Arsenal having a poor season was the perfect storm for the first few months of last season that basically won the title. Once that new manager bounce started to wear off and Slot’s DNA was implemented on the team, the drop off began.
Dropping standards after the Title win. At the time when pundits like Roy Keane were criticising the manager and the players, I thought it was just Keane being an old “in my day” curmudgeon. However, maybe he knows more than most when it comes to hunger and the standards that should be set when it comes to winning back to back titles. Dropping the standards and celebrating winning the league as if we were Leicester City has also created this complacent, arrogant, entitled attitude where we are now seeing players swap shirts after being subbed off 4-0 down against a rival and players shrugging their shoulders at the away fans for not kissing their arse.
The death of Jota and new players coming into a grief-stricken dressing room.
The poor summer transfer window in terms of squad management. Losing high intensity players and adding good players that don’t fit into any structure. Adding Isak and Ekitike instead of one plus a winger. A number 10 in Wirtz when we don’t have a proper DM to play behind him to free him up. Dragging our heels over Guehi.
Slot is not the man for adversity, he lacks the charisma needed to overturn a bad run and it has been obvious since the Forest/City/PSV run last year he should have been sacked and the season could’ve been salvaged. Edwards and Hughes have been too busy slapping each other on the back and simply haven’t pulled the trigger because it would be admitting they fucked up.