goodrobotusses

Szobo especially. He and Rogers seem quite similar as players, No10s whose strengths are mostly in their running power. He isn't but it can't just be him, otherwise teams just set up to keep the likes of Konate and Kerkez as the spare men.

I think Robbo is smart and experienced enough to recognise when he should transition from hanging back as a quasi-third CB to being part of the attack. Helps that Robbo can pass the ball too, so is an effective part of progressing the ball up the field. The inability to do that is my biggest worry about Kerkez right now. Playing through him is basically a dead end.

He does, and Diaz tended to be more involved at No9 last season than Darwin or Jota were because he did the same, but you could never have accused Darwin of not being involved in football matches before Slot arrived. It's not a criticism, per se, I just find it weird how our No9 is often a bit of a non-factor even when we have a lot of the ball.

I find it weird how uninvolved our No9 often is in games. Was like that for most of last season too, no matter who played there – hardly any touches. Never watched Feyenoord under Slot but know Gimenez scored loads for them, so don't know if he was just scoring off a handful of touches or if how they played was different.

Baby steps for us, but if one of us or City can start putting a serious run together, Arsenal will drop points under pressure. They're world class defensively and at set pieces, but their game plan is completely dependent on fine margins. They barely even try to score from open play these days. Never forget that Arteta has Moyes DNA running through him.

Conclusions: Robbo should continue to be our first-choice LB until Kerkez can show he's good enough for the job (not that this was really up for debate); Wirtz's realistic route into the team is on the left because Szobo has to play at No10; we just need to play against teams that play to our strengths, skip the ones that don't.

Maybe in David Hodgson's case it was simply Hodgsons sticking together. Let's not forget Chaotic Primate. His alter ego was even allowed a second shot at running a PL football club, even after filling LFC with the turds of the universe.

Heady days. The last Houllier seasons were a barrel of laughs too. At least when Hodgson was here we were pretty much united in thinking he was s***. Even those who wanted Rafa out and thought Hodgy was a decent appointment quickly changed their minds.

Have noticed this similarity, yes. Means trying to play from the back via him is a dead end, because he can't open up his body to play a forward pass, so ends up going backwards or, if we're lucky, sideways.

Riise would turn 270 degrees to avoid using his right foot, was quite something.

Not arguing one way or the other on our situation but not sure Abramovich's Chelsea is anything we should be seeking to emulate, as successful as they ultimately were.

It was the basis of how we hemmed teams into their own half. I assume this is the sort of thing Slot wants us to do, but organisationally and athletically we look all over the show.

According to Lijnders, the way we hoovered up second balls under Klopp was to always have four players in the midfield zone off the ball. In the classic line-ups that was the midfield three plus Firmino dropping. Later, when Darwin unbalanced the team, we fudged our way around that by having TAA inverting into the base of midfield alongside the DM. At the moment, we have two players in midfield at best when we’re out of possession and the volume of second balls we’re having to compete for when our CBs clear any long balls has shot through the roof.

Yeah, can’t disagree with any of that. To add to your last points, we’ve also gone from Szobo compensating for Salah’s lack of work off the ball to Wirtz not even being able to manage his own duties, let alone those of two players. If two of your three midfielders are dysfunctional, one of your forwards not working off the ball, and pretty much every defender struggling in different ways, then, yeah, voila, that’s what we’re seeing this season. Added to which is now the erosion of confidence that several losses brings.

Not convinced we would have signed both Ekitike and Isak had the Jota tragedy not happened. Think Isak would have been the primary No9 target and Ekitike the second choice if it looked like a deal for Isak were not possible. Maybe the Ekitike money would have gone on a left winger instead. Don't think the plan is or was a two-striker system. I think it's Isak and Ekitike sharing minutes. Isak is the nominal first choice of the two, but given his injury history and the fact we're playing three games a week, which he didn't have to deal with much at NUFC, his load will have to be managed. So there will be rotations and 60-minute substitutions a-go-go. In the meantime, we have to pretend Ekitike could perhaps play wide or we might semi-regularly play two up top because Slot doesn't want to say to Ekitike he was bought to play second fiddle to Isak, as Jota would have. Don't think the player would have come if we hadn't given him the big sell in the summer. He had lots of clubs courting him and he's already been a squad player at a big club once, so he probably wouldn't have fancied doing that again. Think it's going to be a very tricky one to balance in the longer term, because I don't see us shifting away from 4-3-3/4-2-3-1.