goodrobotusses

By this stage, maybe second. But baby steps. We’ve been terrible. Let’s try to get our average points per game above two and build from there. We’re on 2ppg over the last four PL games. If we average that until the end of the season, we’ll finish on 70 points. An average 2.5ppg from this point on gets us 81 points.

A reference to a past kit. Didn’t see that one coming. Can’t wait to sit down and watch the next franchise reboot in that bad boy. Think if (if) we manage to play to 70% of our capacity until the end of the season, we’ll finish third. Villa will drop off because they’re not actually all that good and Chelsea have a Club World Cup-sponsored collapse in the post (which is also what probably hands the title to Arsenal over City).

Find it hard to decide how I feel about Arsenal. A good friend of mine is a legit, sound Arsenal fan so I’d be happy for her if they won it. And unlike what City have become, they’re a “real” football club, so it would be to their credit if they win the league, as it was to ours. But f***ing Arteta and that no-risk style in open play combined with all the Waitrose Stoke set piece b******s. Can’t be arsed with them, and that’s without any exposure to AFTV or the online fan base more broadly. Still think they’ll s*** the bed, mind. Arteta has Moyes DNA.

Maybe he votes for the Swedish far right.

He’s on probation until the next disappointing result. No one ever really unmakes up their mind.

Have some sympathy for this point, but doesn’t explain why Kerkez and Bradley underlap so much.

You'd take a 1-0 win away to Inter under any coach. It's been s*** but for all the gloom after Sunderland and Leeds we're unbeaten in four. No idea if we get into enough of a groove to save Slot long term, but after the last couple of months and the Salah s***show this week I'm happy to grab whatever positives come.

It’s a bit of a misconception that Slot was a total unknown plucked out of the ground like a pikmin. He had been building a track record in the Eredivisie, first at AZ and then at Feyenoord, one of the Dutch big three. Spurs had already tried and failed to recruit him. He was a risk, of course, especially as Ten Hag had failed so spectacularly, but it’s not like he was a complete unknown and therefore there must surely be a dozen potential PL-winning coaches kicking around in Europe’s peripheral leagues. I honestly don’t think any of the coaches in the current PL beyond Guardiola or maybe Arteta has it in them to win the league with us. The lads who can have us, with our particular set of circumstances and nuances, competing for the PL and CL are vanishingly rare. We can get a Glasner, Iraola or a Hoeneß, but if we do we should probably be readjusting our expectations to be fighting for top four every year.

But in another context, like sharing a dressing room with Salah, he’d be doling out those Chelsea and Egypt comments as “banter” and waiting for the lads to join in on the hilarity.

We all know football only exists in England, though. Overall I thought Carra was right, but the Chelsea and Egypt comments were definitely below the belt and unneeded. There are plenty of justified reasons to criticise Salah, but those were personal digs. Of all the things that might explain our dropoff this season, this theory that it's to do with the assistants and coaches is the weakest.

Absolute madness. When I heard Salah was being dropped from the squad, I thought it was only right that Slot assert his authority. But now the club/Edwards/Hughes have briefed the press that it's Hughes' call, they've simultaneously gone scorched earth on Salah and undermined Slot's authority.

Yeah, he didn't say anything after that touchline incident beyond the "fire" quote to the press. Was interesting to read though – can't remember if it was the Joyce or Hunter piece this weekend, one of those – that Salah apparently would have looked to leave LFC had Klopp not left at the end of 23-24. Never seen that actually written down by any of the serious journalists. Edit: It was Joyce: https://www.thetimes.com/sport/football/article/mo-salah-arne-slot-liverpool-leeds-elland-road-cszqdgrk2

Basically, any coach who tries to tell the players what to do on the pitch is doomed to fail. Mad that they were linked with Klopp as a potential replacement then. Surely it’ll be Zidane, who can vibe that gang of pricks to another 5 CLs.

Balague on Alonso’s situation at Madrid, including details on how the squad’s spoiled brats won’t follow tactical instruction, something Ancelotti (!) warned Alonso about before he took the job: https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/articles/c3w75qv0v2no

Don’t see it with Nagelsmann at all. Was a little golden boy having started so early but honestly isn’t that good.

I think it would be a mistake to hire anyone who won't be around to plan pre-season.

Enrique would be an exciting appointment, and might well fancy the challenge of coaching in the PL after winning everything in Spain and France, but I reckon City will also go all-out for him this summer if Guardiola leaves. He, Alonso or Klopp are basically the only three that would excite me if we hired one of them. I have reservations about literally every other candidate.

Of course, and if someone suggests Hoeneß or Iraola, that's totally legit. But to say "of course there are options out there" and then shrug it off when asked to name them feels disingenuous. Not a dig specifically at Gethin, whom I respect as a poster, just I have seen these kinds of responses over time and find them a bit unfair.

I find these kinds of responses to be a bit of a cop out. Like if someone suggests a coach or player can't be easily replaced, there's magically going to be some amazing alternative in the Slovak third division we haven't heard of, and the professionals at the club should know of these people because they have a Wyscout account. We generally know who the best players and coaches out there are. They don't just grow on trees.

Yeah, that RM squad us full of pampered prima donnas who were given the run of the club under Ancelotti. That's not a criticism of Ancelotti, as it clearly worked, but we're generally a different kettle of fish, with different attitudes among the squad (Salah's recent outburst notwithstanding).

His record at Arsenal is probably more relevant to us.

Salah has made a big problem for the club and for himself by doing this. Regardless of anyone's individual feelings on Slot and his failings, if the club fires him now it will basically be that the dressing room got the coach fired, specifically a star player who'd gotten the hump after being dropped. This is basically what John Terry used to do to Chelsea managers under Abramovich. We could end up in a situation where we have to sack Slot and sell Salah just to not have the next coach walk into a situation where he feels he has to kowtow to certain players and their egos rather than making the decisions he feels are best for the team and the club.

John Heitinga passing into Patrice Bergues-Paco Ayesteran-Zeljko Buvac lore in real time here.

If Mo Salah loves Liverpool why has he thrown hand grenade into season? Paul Joyce asks what forward hopes to achieve from his remarkable act of betrayal after his latest omission. Whatever happens a happy ending does not look likely The long wait for a head-turning, jaw-dropping performance from Mohamed Salah this season is finally over. That it was delivered in a dark corridor at a dank Elland Road cuts straight to the heart of the issue that has conspired to leave Liverpool’s season mired deeper in crisis. Salah’s words in aiming a flamethrower at almost everyone at the club, from head coach Arne Slot to the unnamed team-mates he clearly feels should not have been picked ahead of him and many others besides, amounted to one of the most incendiary interviews of recent times. Yet sifting through the ashes of a toxic fallout from his post-match monologue, one key question remains unanswered and that is what he hopes to achieve from a remarkable act of betrayal. Salah’s time at Anfield has been defined by a plethora of different finishes, 250 of them in total to leave him third on Liverpool’s list of leading goalscorers, but if his motive was to undermine Slot then his most spectacular strike may yet prove to be an own goal. Alternatively, if all this was designed to orchestrate his departure from the club, then he is certainly closer to the exit door than at any previous occasion despite numerous veiled threats in the past. To dust down Salah’s quote from 12 months ago, he seems “more out than in”. First, and with regard to Slot’s position, no club that stands for anything sacks its coach on the back of a player challenging team selection as Salah did in the aftermath of Liverpool’s latest capitulation in the 3-3 draw with Leeds United, for which he was again a substitute. The modern Liverpool was founded upon Bill Shankly’s arrival as manager in 1959, several years after he had initially turned the club down because the board of directors wanted an input in team matters. Since then autonomy of selection has always been a core principle that lies with the manager and that cannot change. Nor will it. Fenway Sports Group, which owns Liverpool, wants Slot to come through what is proving a hugely difficult second season after last term’s title success and has shown no sign of wavering on that. Patience will not be limitless but results will ultimately dictate Slot’s future, not Salah stamping his feet. There will be some Liverpool supporters, those who are tired of watching the champions surrender their crown on a diet of set-piece disasters, who will take Salah’s side after his assertion that his relationship is broken with his head coach. Others, the floating voters, will have had their eyes opened as to exactly what Slot must deal with, and will think he did not deserve Salah’s attempted takedown at a time when little else is going right. The very fact that fans are choosing sides is divisive in itself, which is one of the worst aspects of this whole soap opera. What transpired on Saturday evening was very on brand. At some point, Liverpool would have expected Salah to publicly broach his unhappiness at being reduced to the role of back-up in three games, given how he has previously used rare exchanges with the media to state his case. There was his nudge-nudge, wink-wink “if I speak there will be fire” comment when he was dropped for a game at West Ham United in April 2024. That came in the final throes of Jürgen Klopp’s reign and it subsequently became an open secret that Salah would have considered leaving Liverpool then had Klopp not already decided to depart in the summer of 2024 having been left exhausted by the modern game. Consider that in light of Salah’s latest brattish behaviour and, really, who is the problem here? At the start of last season, the victory over Manchester United, the first standout result of the Slot era, became a platform for Salah to announce live on Sky Sports that it could be the last time he played at Old Trafford in a Liverpool jersey because talks on a new contract had not yet started. That was the first attempt to ramp up the pressure on the club regarding his future by mobilising supporters behind their hero. Two months later, he followed up with that “more out than in” soundbite after a victory away to Southampton as the build-up to a Champions League game with Real Madrid became all about fears he might leave. Of course, that was simply an example of Salah speaking with a forked tongue. He wanted to stay all along and was prepared to indulge in some emotional blackmail along the way. Salah got what he wanted eight months ago, with Liverpool plonking a gold throne in the middle of the Anfield pitch upon which the “Egyptian King” happily posed after signing the most lucrative contract in the club’s history worth about £400,000 a week. Maybe part of his interview was lost in translation. Perhaps he meant “throne,” rather than thrown, when claiming something had been hurled “under the bus”. That deal reflects Liverpool’s commitment, but if he is intent on saying his goodbyes at next Saturday’s Premier League game with Brighton & Hove Albion it will be interesting to see how Salah and his agent, Ramy Abbas, intend to extricate him from that agreement. Maybe Liverpool will make it easy for them. Open the door to Al-Hilal, Al-Ittihad or whoever else wants him in the Saudi Pro League and plough the fee they receive into a move for Bournemouth’s Antoine Semenyo for example. It is to be hoped, however, that when the Liverpool sporting director, Richard Hughes, speaks to Abbas he brings up his social media post from last February when Liverpool moved seven points clear at the top of the table. A fan account posted a picture of Slot to which Abbas replied: “Excellent at his job.” Nothing stays the same, clearly, but if Slot has struggled to cope with the period of transition into which Liverpool have been plunged, what about Salah?What is interesting is that Slot has never criticised his player and he has been given plenty of opportunities. First, after the Community Shield against Crystal Palace when Alisson had twice as many touches as the winger. Then after the 1-0 win over Burnley when Salah’s 94th-minute penalty masked the fact he had spent most of the game on the periphery. As recently as the eve of the 3-0 loss to Nottingham Forest, Slot was still deflecting questions about Salah’s form and, specifically, his workrate. And then, when Slot left the player out at the London Stadium last weekend, he said he could still be a great player in the future. Wayne Rooney has criticised Salah. Jamie Carragher, too. Then there was the Chelsea left back Marc Cucurella who stated after the win over Liverpool at the start of October that their head coach, Enzo Maresca, had told his players to attack down Liverpool’s right flank because they were particularly susceptible there. Two months on, the right side has remained a problem in need of a solution. Towards the end of last season, Salah claimed to have an agreement with Slot that he did not need to defend as long as he scored or created goals. That is not how the Dutchman viewed it when asked recently but, in any case, Salah has stopped scoring. So just who has broken promises? Salah has scored five goals this season and there is no doubt that is partly to do with the departure of Trent Alexander-Arnold, the right back with whom he had an almost telepathic understanding. Liverpool have been unable to manoeuvre Salah into as many dangerous areas this term as last. His touches in the opposition penalty box are down for instance, and that is his problem if not his fault. Slot has been unable to solve that. If Salah is frustrated at that then it is understandable given he lives for goals and awards. It clearly also seems unfair to him that his status counts for little when no one has been playing well during a dire run of four wins in 15 games in all competitions. Ibrahima Konaté starts every game despite the litany of errors which continued at Leeds and allowed them back into a contest when the door should have been kept shut. Yet it is a consequence of injury — and bad squad planning — that there is no replacement for Konaté. Cody Gakpo? His form has underwhelmed no question. Perhaps an unwillingness to accept he has not played well is all part of the selfish streak that enabled Salah, 33, to scale the heights and power Liverpool to two league titles and Champions League success. But to go on the rampage because in eight and a half years he has sat on the bench for six days feels a complete overreaction, even allowing for the complex emotions that will course through a player who does not see himself as “the problem”. Another aspect to factor in is that Salah began the season being “frightened” to return for pre-season training after the death of Diogo Jota and was in tears at the end of the opening-game win over Bournemouth as Jota’s song boomed around Anfield. Given everything that Salah has achieved for Liverpool, the day he checks out should be a moment to savour. A time to salute a champion. If he loved the club, as he says, he would not have thrown a hand grenade in the middle of their season. A happy ending does not feel like it is now in the offing.

Apparently the bloke behind Salah in this video is one of the club’s press officers. Watch his reaction when Mo says he’s been thrown under the bus. Won’t someone think of the club’s PR team?