Zoob

Bellingham is such a whiny diving baby.

Boxing day is weirdly and stupidly specific too. Glad to hear the recovery is going well, but I don't expect to see him playing again this year

A goal and 2 assists for Sweden. Should have had a second, and the goal was poor keeping, but he played nearly the entire 90 minutes, ran, pressed, scored, linked up well, and actually looked like a football player again.

I disagree. Bradley Barcola-Jones maybe, but not just Bradley Barcola.

I don't think Gakpo will ever be the world beater that he seems to believe himself to be, but he's just another who was made to look far worse than he actually is by the pointless 'tactics' of Slot. And Gakpo isn't a slouch - he's not Nunez quick, but he also looked like he was playing in lead boots most of the year.

England are in Group L? WTF. Hadn't even looked at the world cup cos football has been so s*** this season. Forgot it was a $extended$ world up to make many of the early matches as pointless and stupid as the qualifying matches, while further running the players into the ground in half empty stadiums and unhealthy heat. Good stuff.

Warren Barton (co commentator on Fox here) makes me want to gouge my brain out when he says pretty much anything. I think it's a combination of his voice, and the fact that he never says anything vaguely intelligent or interesting.

The Athletic revealed that Bayern have been trying to sign Rio from us.

He definitely signed for us, and was really good - He was just injured a lot, which is probably why you don't remember.

Oh, - maybe they just waited for their captain to do it.... Took a bit of time though, but maybe I just wasn't paying attention.

Prob been said before, but it's remarkably telling that Virgil seems to be the only player that has said anything publicly/ on social media about Slot going ('thank you trainer').

The Hughes appointment just looks worse and worse as time goes on. Did nothing the first summer here, signed a load of players that didn't fit into our system the second year, hardly went to any matches, seemingly wanted to stick with Slot... And all this because Klopp, who built us into one of the best teams in the world, had too much power within the club and FSG didn't want a repeat of that? Hughes/Slott sure was a great solution to that one.

That's such an oddly specific thing to say in response to a not particularly controversial post. Rafa was known to be pretty cold and unfriendly in his interactions with players. Like Gerrard pointing out how Rafa would just focus on his mistakes even after a match winning performance. But he was a good manager, so he could just about get away with it. Slot was clueless, out of his depth and didn't have the respect of players, which made his ill-treatment of Ramsay and others look even worse.

I think you can get away with poor man management, and being randomly weird to a few players IF you are hugely successful and a tactical magician. I don't think any of the players liked Rafa, but he created a team that was super hard to beat, and played decent football. Slot could do none of that, and then treated several players like crap.

Really was wonderful to wake up to this news. I kept hoping to see it, and fearing I wouldn't. Nice to be able to feel some level of optimism again, because although there's absolutely no guarantees about what comes next (and really you have to wonder why we didn't go for Alonso - like this decision couldn't possibly have just been on the basis of the last few weeks alone), Slot was clearly out of his depth, and was not going to turn things around. I suspect a lot more will come out about the various areas we were failing in, beyond what all of us could see.

He's still here. It's unreal. Been so swamped at work, I haven't had much time to look online, but whenever I do, I admit there's part of me expecting (obviously a much bigger part is just hoping) that he's been booted. No sane person who has ever watched more than a few games of football could think we are going to turn this around. There is so much wrong with everything we do, and the fact that Slot is hiding behind "injuries" just further shows how clueless he is.

I always felt we scored despite Slot's tactics rather than because of them. We scored relatively few great team goals. It was more about individuals producing good moments. And the bigger problem was the goals conceded, because we were even more pointless and disjoined in defence as we were in attack. Aside from the teams that finished above us, Sunderland, Brighton, Brentford, Chelsea, Everton, Fulham, Palace and Forest all conceded fewer goals than us.

Never been so relieved to have a season be done with, but every minute and every day he remains manager, is going to make it feel he's more likely to be staying. Each day I'll wake up hoping to see the news, and hoping to see this thread locked soon. What a s*** thing to have done to us.

Possibly it was Adam Clery, and others confusing correlation with causation. I just think he got lucky in that first season, and the players - including subs - were playing with the years of Klopp's Liverpool in their mind and legs. I've been watching games from other teams and being jealous of their ability to actually play football. What Slot has done is turn our team into unfit strangers who can't play football anymore. I read about Robbo talking about Jota's death and how football doesn't matter anymore, and I get it. But that can't fully account for this season - and even less so with the new players (who didn't have any residual Klopp in them. Slot has taken the joy out of the players' game just as he's taken the joy out of us watching them. It's almost unfathomable to imagine that the most important (football) people at the club are viewing things any differently. So every sensible part of my brain says he's absolutely gone - but I still wouldn't be at all surprised if he's still manager in August.

The non red is up there among the worst decisions of the season, and there's some stiff competition on that one

Is Slot definitely on holiday again? Like has he really given the players half a week off again, after another shambolic performance just so he can go home and see his family again?

100% I think players have definitely been impacted by Jota's death, and some (Salah, Mac Allister, Robbo) more than others. But I think Slott is very much like Ten Hag. Found a way to win in a very week league, tried to replicate that in the Prem, inevitably failed, and has no plan B. And he should be sacked for the physical condition of our players alone. It's embarrassing. We could spend another 500 million in the summer and I still don't think we'd improve with him as manager.

I keep thinking the same. And things feel even more toxic now than they did at the end of the season when Rodgers should have been sacked. Let's hope they learned from keeping him on, when it was inevitable that he couldn't change it. Hubris (from Edwards/Hughes) is the biggest barrier imo.

Gutted for Hearts and their fans. Leading the table since Sept, and losing it at the death. ooft.

Does make him look that way. Average tenure as a manager there is ~a year over the last 15 years or so, they might not be in Europe at all next season, recorded one of the biggest (or the biggest?) ever loss, and they can't sell any more hotels to themselves to dig themselves out of the hole. Maybe he's just thinking he'll turn it around or walk away with 4 years worth of pay either way. But defo makes me think less of him that he's going there.