55 minutes ago, navbasi said:

What I learnt from meeting Arne Slot – charismatic and innovative, but a big bet by Liverpool

 

When, as expected, Arne Slot arrives at Liverpool’s training centre this summer, he will find at least one amenity perfectly to his taste. Slot is among the growing cast of top-level individuals in football hooked on padel, the high-paced racket sport that lands somewhere between tennis and squash.

 

At Feyenoord’s training base in the Dutch city of Rotterdam, chief executive Dennis Te Kloese promised Slot the club would install a padel court — on the condition they won the league title. Slot made them Eredivisie champions last season, and the padel court soon followed.

It means there is at least one shared trait between Slot and his Anfield predecessor Jurgen Klopp; the German has his own court at Liverpool’s training centre, competing against members of his backroom staff and calling padel “the best game I’ve ever played” (apart from football).

 

After Liverpool and Feyenoord agreed terms for Slot to replace Klopp this summer, many Liverpool fans wondered quite what to make of it and how well-suited the 45-year-old Dutchman is to replacing the club’s most popular and successful manager of the Premier League era. As ever, hasty opinions form, often conditioned by framing.

On the one hand, Slot is one of only two Feyenoord managers to win the title this century and he became the first coach to take the club beyond the group stage in a European competition since 2015, reaching the inaugural final of the Europa Conference League in 2022 and the Europa League quarter-finals last season in parallel to claiming the domestic championship.

 

He won that title despite retaining only four players from his starting line-up in that Conference League final. Sales from that side raised €70million (£59.9m at the current exchange rate) in fees, and just over 40 per cent of that was reinvested as Feyenoord pursued financial sustainability after too many years of financial mismanagement. Of their 12 permanent signings, not one was aged 24 or over.

 

This season, while again recording a positive net spend, Feyenoord are going to finish as runners-up, second to a freakish performance from PSV Eindhoven (who have won 27 and drawn three of their 31 league games so far), and will beat last season’s points tally of 82 if they win their last three matches. They won the Dutch equivalent of the FA Cup final just over a week ago.

 

This version of the story, therefore, is largely of consistent development and excellence.

 

Others, however, may take an alternative framing. They may question if Liverpool are taking an almighty gamble on a man who has only five seasons of experience as a head coach, all of which have been in the Netherlands, outside of European football’s elite, and one of which was in his homeland’s second division.

 

 

Slot has coached only one campaign in the group stage of the Champions League, winning two of six games against Atletico Madrid, Lazio and Celtic, and losing the rest to fail to progress into the knockout phase.

 

In almost three full seasons as Feyenoord manager, Slot has never lost consecutive league games, which is incredibly impressive, but means there is no evidence-base for how he may handle the longer periods of difficulty which are more likely in the fiercely-competitive Premier League, even with a club among its elite.

 

At Feyenoord, no player recruited for Slot exceeded the €9million initial fee spent on Japanese striker Ayase Ueda from Belgian side Cercle Bruges last summer, and the highest player wage is believed to be around €40,000 a week. At Liverpool, he will inherit players such as Alisson and Virgil van Dijk, who were signed for eight-time multiples of Ueda, while Mohamed Salah earns £350,000 a week.

 

It all serves to underline the comparative dimensions of Liverpool and the potential culture-shock of what’s expected to be his new job; where man-management as well as coaching will be crucial.

 

Liverpool have over 37 times more followers on X, formerly Twitter, than Feyenoord’s 649,000; the media demands, global interest and revenues all dwarf those at his current club. The former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher, writing in the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper after the Slot news broke, said: “For the last nine years, Liverpool have possessed one of the top two managers in the world. They are now gambling on the next big thing rather than appointing a proven, real deal.”

 

The truth is nobody can predict with certainty how any manager may fare at a new club but what we can do is consider some of the factors that may have persuaded Liverpool.

Last summer, The Athletic was provided with a window into Slot’s Feyenoord kingdom, receiving a full day of behind-the-scenes access. And on that day he was truly king of the castle, because Feyenoord had just clinched the title and it corresponded with the day he signed a new contract, having rejected the opportunity to join Tottenham Hotspur, who went on to appoint Ange Postecoglou. He has also remained faithful when two more Premier League clubs, Leeds United and Crystal Palace, came knocking earlier in the calendar year.

 

Our trip to Rotterdam included more than seven hours of interviews with Slot, CEO Te Kloese and their head of sporting strategy Matt Wade, as well as extensive time with their scouting team and performance staff. It was a 360-degree examination of a club who had dramatically reformed their structure and performance, and offered rare insight into a man upon whom Liverpool’s incoming sporting director Richard Hughes and Michael Edwards, the club’s former sporting director back after two years away in a new role as owner Fenway Sports Group’s CEO of football, are now preparing to stake their reputations.

 

As for initial impressions, Slot appeared charismatic. But maybe you would be pretty affable too when you have just signed a new contract — a deal which removed a €5million release clause from his previous deal, which would have otherwise come into play this summer. That left Feyenoord able to negotiate last week anywhere between €11million and €15m out of Liverpool, depending on which club’s briefings of their final agreement that you choose to believe.

 

His grasp of English is easier on the ears and more lucid than his compatriot Erik ten Hag, who has sometimes struggled to convey the necessary charisma to both players and supporters in his near two seasons as Manchester Unitedmanager. And there were times, when Slot spoke, where the meaning behind his words could easily have come out of Klopp’s mouth.

 

When explaining why he had chosen to remain at Feyenoord, he talked of the need to “cherish what you have” within an environment, taking pleasure from the way you work and those you work alongside. He said success ought not to be measured by prizes alone. This, however, was tinged with a sense of realism that will be required at Liverpool. At one point he quipped: “If a coach only talks about the process, then nine out of 10 times, the results are bad.”

 

He talked of not wanting to be perceived as somebody who passes through, but as somebody who weaves a legacy into a club. He appeared genuinely touched when I told him how, during the previous evening, I had met a Feyenoord fan who credited Slot for not only winning more points than Ajax, Amsterdam’s 36-time Dutch champions, but allowing that supporter to believe for the first time that his team played prettier football than their arch-rivals, a club so closely connected with the ‘total football’ concept.

 

When he discussed what he seeks from his players, Slot said he initially “emphasised players who are not maybe the best in the world, but who brought energy to the team and also to the stadium”. It is an ingredient which may be needed at Anfield, where the home team feed off the adrenaline shots being pumped out from the stands. He wanted to know how his players conveyed themselves in the media, because that, he said, contributes to the culture.

 

Liverpool’s academy has proven fertile ground this season, as Klopp promoted talents including Conor Bradley, Jarell Quansah, Bobby Clark and Jayden Danns. Expect that to continue under his successor. Slot awarded 12,334 minutes to academy talent in the season Feyenoord won the league. During our visit, he reflected, “Youth players in your first team give energy. And if people feel they can grow inside the club, that drives the culture. I don’t believe that much in experience; I believe more in game intelligence, and young players can have much more than an older player.” He said this mindset, where anybody can progress, should extend beyond the dressing room, citing how Frank Boer, a former marketing department intern at the club, had gone on to become their team-manager, overseeing player care.

 

As with Klopp, he demonstrates empathy and care for younger generations. He looks with concern rather than bitterness towards the smartphone generation. “It’s much more difficult nowadays to play football,” Slot said. “Social media, being judged by everyone; more negative than it was in my day. And these guys now need to be so much fitter — really top athletes. So, yes, a big chance to earn a lot of money, but the pressure is higher than it was 20 years ago.”

 

The data says that Slot’s training sessions, with drills often devised by his assistant Sipke Hulshoff, motivate his players. The playing and training availability of squad members hit 90 per cent in each of his first two full seasons at the club. Leigh Egger, one of the club’s performance leads, said: “The training sessions are constantly changing. They hit the sweet spot of overload, tactics and physical demand. It makes our job in performance easier, because the players really want to train all the time. You see it also with the substitutes, who may have every right to be disappointed at not playing, but our training availability is so high because the sessions are stimulating and really fun, from a footballing regard.” Hulshoff, who is also in the backroom staff of the Dutch national team, is Slot’s first assistant on a matchday, and often seen in the dugout.

 

 

Slot wants his environment to be positive and favourable. He listens and collaborates, traits which cannot always be taken for granted at the highest level of sport. There is a system of fines for players, including for being late to a game or missing a team bus, but he is not a disciplinarian by nature. He does not see his role, or those of his staff, as akin to schoolteachers but rather to provide information, and give players every opportunity to make the healthiest choices.

 

One of Slot’s colleagues said they never once heard him raise his voice at the training ground.

 

Te Kloese, the CEO, said: “His player management is very unique — humane and thoughtful. He gives players a clear game plan, so players feel safe under him.” Players have often been heard speaking to one another after a game, saying how the action unfolded exactly how Slot had predicted, and how his instructions helped them overcome opponents.

 

Yet Slot’s success does not exist in a vacuum. It required uniformity of vision.

 

“Topsport”, as Feyenoord describe their culture, is applied across the club, which means consistency across the senior squad, the medical and performance teams and the academy. Under Liverpool’s sporting-director model, albeit with Edwards sitting at the top, the club want the person who’ll be their head coach, not manager, next season to co-exist within this framework, and at Feyenoord, Slot has demonstrated a willingness to do that.

 

The most successful clubs these days have departments across the board who communicate and support one another, rather than operating as separate siloed operations. In the case of recruitment, therefore, we know Liverpool leaned heavily on their data and research analysts during Edwards’ reign as sporting director, with the data operation identifying the potential of then Roma forward Salah to excel in the Premier League, even after a difficult period at Chelsea earlier in his career.

 

As Klopp grew more successful and powerful at Liverpool, his personal grip on recruitment became stronger, but while the club will welcome input from a head coach, they would like to simplify the role and allow that person to concentrate on the demanding bread and butter of developing players, preparing a team and selecting the line-up for the next match.

None of which means recruitment teams and a head coach should be in conflict. Rather, if it works how it has at Feyenoord, the scouts and analysts spend time with the coach, study his setup and firmly understand his style of play. Then they have a prescription for the type of players needed for the coach to excel, and so go off and work to identify options.

 

What Liverpool would wish to avoid is relying on the knowledge base of a coach, as rivals United appear to have done at times under Ten Hag, who has consistently looked to the Dutch market with which he is most familiar, as well as at players he has coached before, when it comes to signings.

 

At Feyenoord, Slot is invited into recruitment meetings and asked his opinion. Often, he has agreed with the evidence presented to him. There were times he suggested players he coached elsewhere, or made some pretty obvious suggestions from rival clubs such as PSV. There were other times he would swiftly decline options presented by scouts, based on a limited amount of video footage. None of which are automatically negative things — Lisandro Martinez, for example, has proven to be a fine signing for United having played for Ten Hag at Ajax. Yet when Feyenoord made signings, even if the one who came in would not always be his first preference, Slot never held a grudge against the players concerned and devoted all his time and energy to maximising their talent.

 

At Feyenoord, he has learnt to trust the scouting department, who strongly proposed the defender David Hancko after one scout had followed him from the academy of Slovakian club Zilina since his teenage years, with the player soon becoming integral for Slot. They then unearthed a $4million striker in Santiago Gimenez from Mexican side Cruz Azul and Slot’s confidence in the club’s deal-making, led by Te Kloese, was underlined when the CEO’s contacts in Mexico enabled him to beat clubs such as Porto and Benfica to Gimenez.

 

Signed in July 2022, Gimenez became Slot’s top goalscorer and the 23-year-old will this summer be one of the most in-demand young forwards in Europe. Other players, such as Mats Wieffer and Igor Paixao, emerged from the second divisions in the Netherlands and Brazil — Wieffer is now a full Dutch international and Paixao scored Feyenoord’s winner in that recent cup final.

 

 

Christos Akkas, a Feyenoord scout, said: “The coach was very specific about what he wants to play and we were able to capture from a data perspective, from a scouting perspective, but also from a mental, physical, technical, tactical perspective, exactly how he wants to play. And then the club set some rules. So we never sign an older or more expensive player than the one who is being replaced. Then we narrow down our search and, within that range, find the most suitable player.”

 

As Slot’s style of play requires intense levels of fitness and high cognitive ability — Akkas said players have commented how much thought is required on the pitch — scouts would leave no stone unturned. In some cases, this meant following potential recruits to their homes, to see what time the lights went off in the evening. This was particularly important because Rotterdam is a city of nightlife attractions, so there was little use in them signing a party-animal when intellectual and physical endurance is required every day.

 

As for the football, Slot does not disguise that he admires Pep Guardiola. There are traits that mirror much of what we have seen from Manchester City under the Spaniard, particularly the ferocious pressing to recover the ball and possession-based build-up.

In one of his first team meetings at Feyenoord after joining in summer 2021, he told his players that the Champions League final between Chelsea and Manchester City a few weeks earlier produced so few chances (a combined three shots on target) because of the defensive work applied by forwards on both teams.

 

On the ball, he likes his right-backs to drift into midfield, so expect Trent Alexander-Arnold to continue in that role, because Slot’s teams tend to build up with three men in defence and two in midfield, even if the starting formation is more of a back four. Each season, he has slightly modified how his team build out from the back, so as not to become predictable.

 

In central midfield, he likes players who make “depth runs” — fast, explosive moves from deep which can penetrate opposing defences. Midfielder Orkun Kokcu, now with Benfica, needed to physically adapt to increase his explosiveness over the first few yards during his time at Feyenoord, even getting a gym installed at home, where he would receive regular text messages from Slot asking for updates on his progress.

 

Then there are the wingers, who he wants to isolate in one-on-one duels. This is why he brings his full-backs into central areas in the first place — to crowd the middle of the pitch, dragging opponents in to create one-on-one scenarios for those wide men. He said: “If you look at Roberto De Zerbi at Brighton, or Napoli (as they won the Serie A title last season, under Luciano Spalletti), or Man City or ourselves, we’ve got wingers who dominate these situations and that is what you need. That’s why I asked Dennis (Te Kloese, the CEO) at the beginning of the season for a lot of wingers, because you can’t expect every winger to perform in every single game and outplay their opponents. So that’s why they are the players substituted most often.”

 

At Liverpool, where Edwards and Hughes have strong reputations for identifying talent and deal-making, Slot should be prepared to delegate on signings.

 

It is not only within the field of recruitment where Slot has shown a preparedness to buy in. Feyenoord’s director of medical and performance Stijn Vandenbroucke has worked in his field for over two decades and he gushed as he described how the coach had complemented the club’s overall vision, all of which meant Feyenoord regularly excelled on “physical parameters, injury availability, winning games and physically outworking the opposition” — some pretty useful traits for a football club.

 

Vandenbroucke detailed the club’s approach to combining biological, psychological and social needs of players, to aid the individual and the team’s overall development.

Take, for instance, the case of striker Gimenez, where Slot was prepared to take a medium-term view after he arrived from Mexico.

 

When Feyenoord look at possible signings, they not only have their scouts observe the player, but the club’s performance and medical departments, too. Sometimes, the football staff will flag limiting factors that should be improved by the performance team (strength or speed, for example) and on other occasions, as was the case with Gimenez, the observations can come from the performance end. For Gimenez, they analysed his running style and noted he needed more “control around his trunk and pelvis” to avoid injuries and physically compete at the highest level. The observations are based on screenings of a player’s movement patterns, in-game and on the training field.

 

Vandenbroucke said: “We came to a conclusion that we needed a few months to get him (Gimenez) up and running. Arne agreed and he is the only manager I’ve ever worked with who would do that. It meant accepting we cannot play him from the start of the game because we needed the time to put more into him to get the output in the later stage of the season.”

 

Gimenez therefore started only five games in his 2022-23 debut season before club football paused in the November for the World Cup held in Qatar during the northern hemisphere’s winter. The plan went so smoothly that, after the tournament, he started 20 of Feyenoord’s final 21 Eredivisie and Europa League matches, scoring in 12 of them and finishing as their 20-goal top scorer.

 

Klopp has at times shown patience of his own, most notably taking time to bed Fabinho and Andy Robertson into his Liverpool team after they were signed.

 

Slot was sufficiently secure in his own skin that he allowed the club to bring in a sports psychologist, Dan Abrahams, to help the players overcome the mental block that had prevented Feyenoord winning away to fierce rivals Ajax since 2005. Abrahams supported the team in this challenge, culminating in a 3-2 away victory in March 2023, and their superiority over Ajax was reaffirmed this season with a 4-0 win in Amsterdam last September and a 6-0 romp in Rotterdam this month.

 

Feyenoord’s superiority in that away game was such that Ajax’s fans forced play to be halted by throwing flares onto the field.

 

Slot believes in the science. His performance experts suggested that the players should seek to adapt their lives to revolve around upcoming kick-off times. For example, if Feyenoord are due to play a game starting at 9pm on a Friday, then the staff and Slot will make clear to the players via a text message that they should not be asleep at that hour on the previous evening and should be active, to avoid their circadian rhythm making them flat on matchday. The Feyenoord backroom team were tight-knit, both together and with the players, and it will be interesting to see how and if this can be replicated at a bigger club.

He is seeking to bring one of his heads of performance, Ruben Peeters, with him to Liverpool, along with Hulshoff. He has tried and failed to convince Marino Pusic, formerly an assistant at Feyenoord, to be on his Anfield staff because he only joined Shakhtar Donetsk as their head coach last October and wishes to remain in that job.

 

In Hulshoff and Peeters, Slot will have allies who would seek to replicate the high-performance environment I witnessed in motion at Feyenoord. Yet he is going to need more help. He will need patience from above when results inevitably do not always go to plan and the scorching spotlight of life in the Premier League life burns bright, he will need expertise from the club’s recruitment department and, most crucially, he will need to secure buy-in from players of a profile and reputation that is of another scale to what he has experienced so far in his brief managerial career.

 

With Slot, the ideas and smarts appear to be there — a modern coach for a modern structure; it is now up to him to make the leap and up to Liverpool to produce an environment in which he can truly thrive.

 

https://theathletic.com/5453208/2024/04/29/arne-slot-liverpool-feyenoord-head-coach/

 

Perhaps add 'by Adam Crafton' near the top?  I refused to read a long piece unless I first know who it's written by. 

17 hours ago, TheHowieLama said:

 

Van Dijk can play as a top CB for the next 5 years.

Great, so we should get excellent offers for him. 

Let's see what Slot thinks.  Van Dijk divides opinion among the Dutch I think. Some see him in a colder light than we do. 

Personally I think he's still very good, but too often he seems in 3rd gear, I can't remember the last time I saw him actually sprint. You can argue that's a sign of a good defender, but you can argue that we've gone 1-0 down far too often under his watch. 

As I say, for me it's a Slot decision. If VVD backs Slot completely then great, but if VVD is less enthused then he needs to be gone. 

Slot must be given a blank canvass, 100% buy-in. 

If he wants to sell Alisson then I'd back him. You have to actually back the manager, no questions, in year 1 especially.  

Same goes for Virgil, at this age you sell. Someone may get another good year out of them, but ultimately it's the right decision for our future. 

2 hours ago, Dicko said:

He performs in the next three games never mind next season it will be forgotten.

I mean Diaz is actively trying to get to Barca should we drop him as well?

No, I want a decent fee for him, we don't want to seek like we're desperate to offload.  

7 hours ago, Scott_M said:

If he can influence it in anyway (which he might not be able to), what do we think Slot does with Mo? 
 

Assuming he signs a new contract, keep / build a side round a player who might be starting to decline? 

Decide it’s time to cash in and build a side around a younger player(s)?

If Slot is a decent manager, and it's a big IF, then he'd already be on the phone to Rami and telling him to find his client a new club before he arrives.  

It's been a while since we've been in this position around new managers Vs player power, but we forget how toxic it can be. 

I was listening to John Terry being interviewed  by Simon Jordan, and Terry explained what happened under various managers at Chelsea, and we forget that it's a long list.  Vialli, Ranieri, Grant, Ancelotti, Mourinho twice, Villas Boas, and Benitez. In each case, the success of the manager was intertwined with their popularity with the established players, these being Terry, Lampard and Drogba. 

I don't want that.  And Mo should be sent packing before Slot even gets here. I'd also cash in on Virgil, and I'd move along Thiago, Adrian, who are also seen a senior players within the squad.  

A new manager has to have complete control and player buy-in. 

2 minutes ago, andyj said:

Totally agree leave him out of the team full stop.

I would agree, and I'd fine him a month's wages and he can forget about playing for us again, we don't need the circus.  

TBH, I've not been impressed with him since that bullshit he pulled with the contract extension while on holiday in wherever the fuck he was. Messiah complex was in full view then.  

I'm very wary of false prophets ever since Torres.  Players are decent lads until they get agents in their ear.  They are grown lads, do not feel sorry for any of them. They are work tools, and when they get blunt you either sharpen them or you replace them.   

Sliding doors moment. 

Remember this lesson boys, you never, ever, turn down a bid like that for anyone. 

Should have sold him last summer.  

8 minutes ago, TheHowieLama said:

Coverage showing a loop of Klopp and Salah going at it before the sub - this could not have ended worse for a great man.

They were watching Emerson's shot that Alisson saved at the time.  Klopp then said something snide to Salah, which can only have been "that's how you hit a shot Mo".

It can't have been anything else to illicit that response from Mo. 

It's not as if Elliott was defending well and he says to Mo " that's what I want you to do".

3 minutes ago, TheHowieLama said:

Klopp deserves a far better end to his reign.

Klopp being 'tired' isn't an excuse unless he's very ill.  As such, I'm starting to think we're bringing Slot in before the season ends.  We've been far too aggressive and noisy in securing a successor during the season. 

None of this makes any sense. 

9 minutes ago, TD_LFC said:

Was it the year we won the league where we were exceptionally lucky with injuries and had far fewer than in previous (or future) years?

Maybe, but our key players were younger and fitter and perhaps more hungry at that time. We also had naturally fit players in Mane, Salah, Firmino, Milner, Henderson, Wijnaldum, Robbo, Trent, Virgil, exceptional athletes at great ages. 

5 minutes ago, SasaS said:

Can we just finally admit it is because the manager is leaving and players are no longer giving that extra effort that makes Klopp's teams effective? It's staring us in the face.

You'd surmise that they'd give MORE effort than usual, and he'd demand it. I don't think this is the problem. 

If anything there is more impetus to impress an incoming manager now, the favouritism is ending. 

It's not JUST injuries, but it's a factor. 

So currently in the PL there are 131 injuries, though this is a bit cute because for example it doesn't list Doak, Bajcetic and Gordon for us.  But let's skim over that for a moment. 

So, 131 divided by 20 clubs = the average number of injured players per club is 6 or 7. 

City and Arsenal have 1 injury each....

Now, there's a couple of questions that need asking here. 

1. Do those two clubs have a medical team with knowledge or skills superior to other PL clubs?  We don't know, but I don't see why they might have more resource than Chelsea, or Newcastle, very rich clubs with unlimited reach.  Even us or Spurs, are we recruiting from a different level of staff? Don't think so? 

2. Do they have better facilities, and does this even matter? I mean, it's debatable, but I'm sure that many PL club physio and gym facilities now look largely the same for the top 8 clubs in the PL. Sizes may vary, that's likely the biggest difference. 

3. It can't be a number of games issue.   We play roughly the same number of games as they do, and I don't see a need to differentiate between CL and Europa, both are high level and comparably scheduled. 

4. Is it a risk appetite threshold when signing players?  IE, do we sign higher-risk players because we see value in taking that risk? I haven't looked into this, but it's worth a look.  You could argue that Arsenal took risks on Partey and Jesus considering their past injuries.  We certainly took risks on Thiago, Jota, Alisson, Konate. 

City took a risk on Haaland. 

I think City definitely are ahead of us and Arsenal in this regard, they pay the premium for players with elite body mechanics. 

5. Intensity of gameplans?  I don't have access to data like number of sprints per game, but this would answer that, along with distance covered per 90.  I'll say this though, we're almost in May and Arsenal look much more intense than us. We look cooked, it's a stark difference.  

6. How good is drug testing these days?  Dunno, it's a shadowy area. There's nothing transparent about it to the public, we don't even know if drugs test happen, we only know of anecdotal tests being missed for example.  I mean, do they collect samples and bin them?  How rigorous are the checks and balances on this stuff?   We take this on enormous levels of trust, and we really shouldn't, the regulators haven't earned that trust. 

7. PGMOL.  It's a cabal, it's full of flawed humans, and they aren't paid as much as footballers.  It's a soft target.  Regulators are always targeted and tested in any profession.  They are capable of making absurd decision and they are protected from direct adversarial questioning of decisions to a quite improbable and odd point.  They have a more protected personal life than a royal child. They don't get papped, they don't get called out by MPs, they don't get dragged in front of interviews, and their in-game chats are protected. You couldn't design a softer target for criminals to target. 

21 hours ago, Moo said:

 

KDB works really fucking hard and is always switched on to what's going on around him. Can you say the same about Trent?

Don't get that mate, the ground our full backs cover is vast, they aren't lazy. 

Trent has it all, it he bulks up a bit and gets the right coaching then he can be a brilliant physically dominant midfielder.  

Just let him wander around like KDB does, pops up wherever he likes. 

The closest thing there is to KDB in terms of chance creation. 

Any other manager builds a midfield around him. 

Chances are he doesn't sign a new contract now, let's be really honest here. 

All that coaching, you'd hope we'd have a better plan than to try and focus all shots through the bottleneck of the 'D' on the edge of the area where Everton have 4 men at all times. 

Perhaps fortuitous Klopp is leaving, yanno, we're approaching question mark territory across the past 2 years now. 

We all get to clap him out, rather than what might have developed next year.

Fuckinell, just watching Gomez and Tsimikas come on now, just looking at poor Jayden Dann's face on the bench.  This isn't the same manager that first came here. 

2 minutes ago, Elite said:

Sad way to end the Klopp tenure this.

Klopp trying to turn around a 2-0 loss by bringing on Elliott, Endo and Quansah. 

Read it back to yourself. 

3 minutes ago, Moo said:

Jones FFS, shite, absolute waste of space that lad is far too often.

Yep, pure shite. 

But wait, Klopps solution is to put the equally redundant Elliott on.  Again. For the 50th time, as if one day he turns into Pedri.

I'm actually not arsed now, quite looking forward to being shit actually, taking joy from small moments game to game rather than having an unrealistic trophy expectation to find joy.  It's not even joy at that point, it's relief. 

I'm looking forward to some big changes in players, I'm so devoid of excitement looking at our squad.  It's criminal really.  Gravenberch, Gakpo, Szoboszlai, Endo, Nunez, Jota, Elliott, Jones, Salah, Tsimikas, I'm falling asleep just thinking about them. 

It doesn't .after who comes in, they've been lobbed a hand grenade. Maybe Slot is a controlled explosion, a cheap and expendable fall-guy to oversee a year of churn.  

This summer he loses experienced dressing figures in Thiago, Matip and Adrian.  We possibly sell Salah.

Next summer we lose Van Dijk and Trent on frees. 

We're also down to the final year for Robbie and Konate, we may sell. 

By all means, paint me a brighter picture.  

21 hours ago, Lee909 said:

 

Yes let's compare Klopp taking over a midtable Bundesliga 2 club in Mainz sitting in the relegation zone, a side who'd never been in the Bundesliga to Gerrard taking over Villa. A side he had well on its way to relegation with 8pts from 11 games to a side Emery got to 7th with 53pts from 27 games with the same players. But you know all this and are either completely delusional or on a wind up

 

 

1 hour ago, BeefStroganoff said:

Wheres Cole Palmer?

It's Arsenal, of course he's fucking injured. 

Of course he is. 

If we had a player like Odegaard we'd win everything.  

I'm betting that City go big for him. 

If Arsenal had signed Artur Melo and Aquilani they'd have both played 40 games this season. 

On 22/04/2024 at 15:52, Simbo said:

FFS.

 

Looks like Palmer is going to miss the game against Arsenal this week.

 

Unreal luck for Arsenal this season. Hard to take them seriously if they don't win the league, they'll never ever be given such a set of fortuitous circumstances to win a title again.