TheDrowningMan

Tuchel should not even be on a longlist of managers for a job like ours, let alone an actual contender - he hasn’t got what it takes and we’d be looking again come December. Would even take a chance on an unknown quantity from the Championship ahead of him.

We’ll still have some people claiming that a miserable known quantity like Tuchel should be a candidate for our job.

Teams never win leagues with a manager whose departure has been announced. The thing I’d question is how the news was leaked - Klopp let the owners know in November so making it known to the players & public clearly wasn’t the plan. That suggests there’s someone pretty high up at the club leaking information that they shouldn’t.

Not only do we have to beat them, but in all likelihood win every remaining game. If we are to drop any more points, it’ll have to be on a weekend where City have already done so - they will 100% capitalise if it’s the other way around.

Even if they go 4-0 up, Brentford have less than no chance of getting anything from this.

Yeah, that’s the thing - I’m surprised by how people get lured into a false sense of security by them year after year. It’s after New Year that they’re almost unstoppable, so you absolutely cannot allow them to get in front of you. Given City’s run of games, we almost certainly now have to win every game up to and including the one against them at Anfield. Even if we manage that, we cannot drop any further points unless they’ve already done so because they’ll just capitalise if we do.

It’s (very) unlikely, but we can still do it. We need to win every game up to and including the one against them. Beyond that, any dropped points would have to be in situations where City had already done so and therefore couldn’t capitalise. It’s confusing as to why there’s this hype about Arsenal being in a title race if they win today - they’re much too far behind City in the second half of a season to stand a chance.

Yep. If they do go for an uninspiring choice, then it’s going to end up going full Hodgson a few months in. The absolute last thing we want is a bungled, drab appointment where the writing is on the wall from day one because the reality is that we’ll probably be looking for a new manager come the middle of next season, and by that point it’s going to be a lot harder to get it right.

I think that would be a bad case of hedging their bets. I’m just not seeing it with Nagelsmann - there’s nothing that stands out as outstanding or has ever suggested he might be the next big thing. He got a disproportionate amount of hype at one time because he was the Doogie Howser of Bundesliga management. He had a couple of good seasons at Hoffenheim, was broadly on par with Hassenhuttl and Rangnick at Leipzig and was then adjudged by Bayern not to be worth carrying on with. If Alonso is up for it, I can’t think of any real reason not to give it to him unless Klopp changes his mind. All the other contenders are flawed in one way or another, so I’d much rather take a chance on someone who might be something special than go for a ‘safe’ choice.

Already started.

That…will do.

That’s given them a route back into the game. Nunez should never, ever take a penalty unless he absolutely has to, and even that should be after the goalkeeper in a shootout.

Not feeling at all optimistic about this one. We absolutely cannot let City get ahead of us at any point in the second half of the season, which they almost certainly will if we drop any points between now and March.

He’s also damaged goods following the Bayern spell - We shouldn’t be appointing anyone who was sacked for underperforming recently. There’s not going to be any sort of aura there. If he weren’t unattainable, you could, perhaps, begin to justify a short term exception for a legendary manager like Ancelotti (who has been sacked relatively recently, and likely will again at some point by Madrid), but we absolutely shouldn’t be thinking short-term.

For what it’s worth, Ornstein is backing it up.

How often in reality have they successfully poached a top manager from a huge club? In the event he comes here, I don’t think it’s as simple as Alonso leaving as soon as they come calling - Mourinho had already decided to quit Inter in 2010 and even Ancelotti went from relative minnows in PSG and Everton.

In a weird way, yes. He certainly has an aura thanks to the start he got at Barcelona, and he’s done well / taken the right jobs to maintain and cultivate that. I suspect he might end up in a Mourinho spiral if he took a job that didn’t work out and was forced to be less selective, but I have a feeling he’s too savvy for that and would rather retire with his reputation intact than take a risk.

Yeah, this. People seem to underestimate having an aura and charisma whereas I think it’s fucking gold dust. If you can establish yourself as a manager who inspires and gets that much extra out of your players, you’re among an elite few. It can be lost if you stop being successful (see: Mourinho) but while you have it it’s priceless. Tactics can be learned and replicated, but instilling absolute belief in your players that they can go above and beyond? Nope, and that’s why I think this is absolutely the wrong job for, as you put it, a ‘coach’ like De Zerbi or a known quantity at smaller clubs like Emery.

Also, I’m sure he’s well aware that a managerial job is very different to that of a player. Even then, it’s not like he’d agitated for a move out of the blue…Rafa wanted to replace him with Gareth Barry, that didn’t happen and he gave perhaps his best season at the club before wanting out. Unless we appoint a stopgap there’s no danger of a Liverpool manager being turfed out after a few months in the event he’s not an immediate success, but there’s every chance of that happening at Real Madrid. I don’t buy the idea that his head would be turned as soon as the vacancy came up at Madrid.

He’s damaged goods now, too. Never going to have the sort of aura that is needed to be a truly top class manager in this era.

I doubt they’d go for someone who was a disaster in his last job & whose achievements at Brighton have been put into perspective by the subsequent manager’s success.

I’m inclined to agree on Zidane, but then I think back to what I’ve said about City and how it took Guardiola to really unlock their full (unfortunate and ill-gotten) potential despite spending shedloads before him. I’d go for Alonso ahead of him, but I’d take Zidane ahead of any of the others, in the hope that he really is a special manager and not a right place, right time one-club wonder. Suspect he wouldn’t want the job though.

Emery is a good manager if you want to win the Europa or qualify for the CL - how often do you see someone with that sort of CV build dominant, title and CL winning teams? It doesn’t tend to happen, and that’s why I’m hoping for Alonso, and would rather take a chance despite the fact that he is relatively unproven - he might have that combination of tactical nous and charisma seen in only a select few. Replacing Klopp with a proven quantity who has found his level and whose level is just ‘really good’ isn’t going to get us anywhere fast unless we start spending like City. Even they had to wait for Guardiola to start winning year after year.

That’s about as close to “of course I would fucking take it” as possible while under contract with your team at the top of the table.

He announced it after they’d won the title. I think in the early 2000s he was going to leave and then did a u-turn after they’d fallen away (01/02 when we came second to Arsenal, possibly?).