Colonel Bumcunt

The charity shield is 2 weeks away. Slot hasn't even shook hands and introduced himself to half the team. It's not like Klopp, players knew him before they even met him. This is very different. This has the potential for pain.

It's daft but it's an added pressure under the circumstances. Will he play safe or will he try his new ideas? Another loss, allied with no transfer activity, will not be well received. This feels so poorly planned.

Trump camp must be fuming. Lots of brio from Trump supporters about how the election will be a walkover, it won't be. He's old as fuck, and Biden stepping down due to old age just furthers that assessment. Let's see Trump tiptoe around a black woman without tripping up for the next 3 months.

We should be all over Desire Doue. Yes it's a real player.

You tell me which other players you're hammering (because the media has been hammering) for individual mistakes. And I'll point out to you the massive imbalance between white and black players receiving criticism. And if you parrot that shit then you're complicit. Unintentionally I hope, but you're complicit.

You're picking on individual mistakes he made? Great. Now do Salah. Now do Alisson. Now do Van Dijk. In fact, do De Bruyne, and Yamal Or does Trent have to be perfect? Is that the level needed for a young black lad from Liverpool to earn his place?

Very few top midfielders have the nous of an elite level number 6. That's why we should be all over the Kante option until we can find younger.

Too many of you listen to Gary Neville, that's patently obvious. The failing in that position has always predominantly been a direct product of Klopp's direction to the player and the team.

Yeah he's fucking shit.

He's the best right back in the world by a country mile. You can mitigate every 'failing' with the people around him not helping as much as they should, and extremely risky tactics by Klopp in exposing a single player that much, for so long, especially when he seldom gets a break. Carvajal is a great right back but he's got Valverde busting a gut to help him, and Rodrygo is a willing helper. Likewise Walker, with Rodri. Trent has Endo, sometimes.

I'm getting really fucked off with the building narrative around Trent. I was listening to a podcast today talking about England's potential squad for 2026 and who would play RB, and names like Reece James and Livramento were getting put alongside Trent, and I'm now fuming. I just watched a YT video of Trent's first 100 assists and goals. I'm struggling to find a similar video for a 25 year old fullback. I'm fact I'm struggling to find one for a 25 year old PL midfielder or winger. I don't give a fuck about the tawdry nonsense about his defending, he's been tasked with covering a quarter of the field on his own, there's downsides to that, it's a miracle he does as well as he does. He's fucking brilliant. That said. He's let this contract thing get out of hand. He should be our top earner now. If we haven't offered that then I side with him. If we have offered that and he's still not signed then he needs to go this summer. He's a fan, he should remember the days of Macca and Owen, we don't like being fucked by Madrid.

Disagree. The narrative from the start has been "oh my, what a talented squad Klopp has left for him", but that's an awful assessment of the situation imo. The likes of Trent/Virg/Mo wanted new contracts for the past 6 months, had Klopp stayed then those 3 would have been boxed by the end of the season. They waited because they didn't know who was coming in, the club weren't even sure who was coming in, it was mid season and candidates had to tread a fine line between making their interest known to us but also wanting to be respectful to their employer and fans of their clubs, and also not derailing the confidence of players as there were still trophies up for grabs in their respective countries. So now we have a manager, but he can't get near his key players to judge their appetite for taking part in his plans, so he can't make a decision on those contracts. How can Hughes deliver options to him when he hasn't had a chance to work with these players and determine weaknesses in his system? Again, it's not like most clubs. Slot isn't bringing his own talent spotters with him, he's the coach, that's the model we're operating, and to further complicate it we're bringing in Hughes from scratch, everyone is finding their feet, it's a mess. We also can't judge a lot of the squad based on last season because so many of them are so young that they develop rapidly as they grow, we saw that with Quansah and Bradley, in a matter of my months they went from 'kid' to 'lad', it all fell into place. Slot is, rightfully, going to look very closely at the immediate term and short term development potential of Danns, Nyoni, Doak, Clark, Chambers, Gordon, Kone-Doherty, McConnell, Beck, Koumas, Cannonier, all need consideration. But on top of that is the more senior young contingent of Van den Berg, Bajcetic, Elliott, Morton, Carvalho, again they're at that age where development can accelerate or stagnate. How much time did Slot realistically have to do that? No point in looking at tapes of last season, it's not enough data and too much time has passed anyway. We could argue the Euros has helped give him a better chance to assess these lads, but it will be at the expense of training time with the senior players. Not his fault though. My expectations are in the dirt. I'll be impressed if the media don't fall into 'crisis' mode by October, but even if we do it'll be way too early to judge him. We'll just have to dig in and wait.

TAW had a decent conversation about this in a pod recently. Madrid isn't the answer to his prayers, he won't be playing midfield for them. He wouldn't even start RB ahead of Carvajal. I wish we'd just commit to using him as a midfielder and bring in a RB to cover Bradley.

Not many clubs lose a manager in slow motion like we did. It's been a perfect storm of shit timing with the Euros as well as contract issues for key players. But the club aren't totally to blame, this is how Klopp wanted to go, but it's painted us into a corner.

Wakey wakey Arne. Lesson 1. Every Liverpool game, even in pre-season, is a cup final for the opposition.