goodrobotusses

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.

He did, doesn’t mean he was being honest though. Seemed very fuzzy about what happened with Ward too. Lad left the job after six months. Not opposed to the idea of Klopp coming back someday, and can even see him doing so with all the lads back in behind the scenes, but think his return would have to be after Salah is gone. Nothing to back that up, just a hunch and the fact Salah was looking miserable towards the end of Klopp’s last season and suddenly had a new lease of life under Slot last season.

He was?

Perhaps, but integrating Wirtz into Klopp's LFC team would probably have meant changing the system (to a 4-2-3-1) or trying to change the player (into a No8 or a left winger), so who knows what knock-on effect that would have had on our off the ball play. As D.Boon suggests, signing Nunez knocked a fairly finely tuned team out of whack and he theoretically had an obvious role in our 4-3-3, only our 4-3-3 was in large part dependent on Firmino's strengths, which Nunez didn't share.

Hahaha! He was brilliant that year. Played 31 PL games!

I loved Sadio's first season. Midfield of peak, uninjured Lallana, Hendo holding and Gini, with Sadio, Bobby and Coutinho ahead of them. Too mad to win anything but so much fun to watch. Saw the season opener at Arsenal at a bar in Osaka after midnight, was nuts.

He's very good, but I suspect the wheels would fall off his team circa February-March if they were in Europe as well as competing in the league.

Our window was even worse for three at the back even if we had landed Guehi and still kept Gomez. We'd have had five CBs in total, two of whom are injury prone and one 18 years old.

Yeah, got what you meant. I had read the same line from multiple journalists, so it's something that was clearly fed through.

Have said it elsewhere: If Slot were looking to replicate PSG's system and style of play, as the likes of Pearce have suggested, we shouldn't have signed Wirtz. PSG don't use a No10, and Wirtz doesn't look cut out to be a No8, nor is he anything like any of their super-dynamic forwards. 7/10s, the pair of them. Diaz could sometimes be an 8/10.

Think this is the main problem: our counter-press is f***ed because teams have figured out it's useless against teams that play long, and our quick breaks are dead because we haven't replaced TAA's deep progressive passes. So we're stuck with that painful, slow passing between the defenders and deeper midfielders that only ever goes in circles until we give the ball away. All of our midfielders have assets, but none really has that long pass in his locker with any consistency. The only deeper player in our team who does is VvD, and teams have figured out to press us in a way that leaves the ball with any of our other defenders, none of whom can pass particularly well. Maybe we sign Wharton in the summer and that helps, but it doesn't help us now.

I think we need evidence that Wirtz can play well in the PL before we build the team around him.

Wouldn't be against either coming in but I don't think any number of signings will fix what's the matter right now. We're all over the show off the ball and our passing is slow/s***/backwards when we have it.

And it's not as if they've dumped these players on his head. As far as anyone can tell, these are the lads Slot himself wanted. Marc Guehi must have some unknown god-like powers we're not aware of for our s*** performances to rest on his non-signing.

Think Slot’s future is dictated entirely by context. Things are s*** now and have been for most of the season despite some decent results to start, but that doesn’t mean things can’t improve. Isak, Wirtz and Mac Allister all click and suddenly we look a different proposition. But as stated by others, the worry is that there are few signs of a coherent direction. Sacking him now in the assumption he can’t get us going again would be madness IMO, a panicked attempt to preempt the possibility things get worse. But if things do get worse, and we’re still a s***show come December, the pressure on his job will be real and justified. Likewise, if we limp through the season but somehow do enough to snaffle a CL spot, albeit still with no obvious coherence in the team, his job will be under threat and justifiably so. But if he can get us out of this tailspin and we have a strong, coherent second half of the season and the plan, whatever it is, looks to be coming together, then we look back at the season as one of transition and go again. The bare minimum is CL qualification for me, but it has to be paired with the sense that Slot has got a grip on things and this new team can challenge for trophies again under him.