joe_fishfish

If that’s all true about Amorim’s playing style I think it’s a bit of a shit decision. The stuff about having insane wage demands and a cunt of an agent and using West Ham’s interest to flush out a bid from us, yeah. That should have been enough.

When it turns out to be Lukaku we’ll think back to this tweet and it’ll all become clear.

I’m still hoping they go for Southgate

Xavi is staying at Barca now

City? Paying players off the books? I'm shocked. SHOCKED

Striker and defensive midfielder are the two big glaring holes in the squad. I like Jayden Danns and Stefan Bajcetic a lot but we need top quality first choice players in those positions. After those two it’s just replacements for whoever leaves.

If you have Trent and Davies as your full backs you could have the greatest centre backs in history in the middle and still ship shedloads of goals. Davies makes Trent look like 2001 Jamie Carragher defensively.

Fair points. Hope whatever his plan is, he gets it working quickly.

Agree with all this, it looks like he's the best option from a particularly shite bunch.

Do we have to keep two of them? Fuck's sake.

I can see why we didn't go for Amorim though. I think he would have required a lot more turnover in the squad. Sporting rely loads on extremely fast wing backs and outer centre backs, Geny and St Juste in particular are absolutely rapid. I think he'd have taken one look at Trent's work out of possession and thought, nah, this lad can't play wingback for me. For his ideal squad we'd have needed to sign backup wingbacks as well simply because of the ground they'd cover and the amount of games we play. We'd also have no playing time for many of the centre mids. Szoboszlai, Elliott, Jones, Mac Allister and maybe Trent competing for one spot alongside a proper holding mid, and we probably want to strengthen that holding midfield position as well. Diaz might not have fitted either because the wide players in Amorim's front three are more like number 10s than wingers. So you'd be looking at 8-10 deals to be done for a manager and playing style that might turn out to be useless at Premier League level. Slot seems like a bit less of a gamble in that regard because his playing style is more similar to Klopp's. But the risk for me is that he's even less proven because the Dutch league is fucking garbage. What I've seen of his Feyenoord side, it looks like they rely on quick incisive passing in and around the penalty box, even against teams that defend deep. You can't do that so much in the Premier League, the players are so much bigger and quicker that the spaces Feyenoord typically try and open up often will not exist. Also the talk of his pressing system being man-to-man and extending over the whole pitch doesn't sound good, it doesn't seem to work that well in the Premier League, Leeds conceded shitloads when they played like that under Bielsa. There are so many games in English football, no squad can keep it up for 90 minutes three times a week, not when you're up against extremely physical opponents and shite refs. Even Abu Dhabi, with their infinite money and manager who both loves Bielsa and is no stranger to PEDs, don't play that way. I dunno what the answer is though. I'm sort of pinning my hopes more on Hughes being able to sign the sort of players Edwards was signing in 2017 and 2018 instead of the sort of players we've been signing recently. If we got one or two really fucking excellent first team players in this summer, whoever the manager is will matter a lot less.

To be honest I was quite looking forward to some defensive solidity and hard work out of possession. I love Klopp and all he's done for us but the high risk / high reward style of play has made watching us very stressful. Even earlier in the season when we were on a good run I was barely enjoying the games because we were always one misplaced pass from conceding a goal. As happened at Old Trafford.

There’s been a few mentions of him preferring a man to man pressing scheme rather than the zonal triggers we use at the minute. Atalanta did a proper number on us with that approach but it’s easy to negate. Leeds used it under Bielsa and conceded shitloads.

He’s going to PSV?

Kinell imagine how bad this season would have been if we’d still had Henderson and Fabinho instead of Gravenberch and Endo, we’d have been battling the mancs for sixth

Are Saudi teams still going to be signing players from Europe for big money this summer? I’m really not sure they will. You’d imagine Salah would still be a player they’d target for cultural and religious reasons but I think the days of us offloading shite like Henderson and Fabinho there are over.

I still don’t think this squad is that far off. The biggest thing we’ve been hurt by is Salah falling off a cliff. Nunez is shit, apart from the one time in a hundred that he actually gets a decent shot off, but he’s always been shit.

Start the kids for the last four games, can't be any worse than the senior players

We've not been that bad in general, just absolutely fucking shite in both boxes, as per usual.

English managers especially.

De Zerbi isn't exactly risk free either

I think he’ll manage in Germany again. Hopefully not Bayern. English football seems to exacerbate everything he hates about the job and minimise the bits he actually enjoys.

And now he’s injured again. Who could have predicted that?

There’s loads of reasons a manager can fail, doesn’t mean they weren’t the best option at the time. You can’t deny our signings have got worse since Edwards left.

Thought it would be the other way round, he worked with Stevie when he was U18s manager