Arne Slot ‘hubris’ leaves Liverpool waiting for Salah AFCON exit to revert crisis

Arne Slot’s ‘hubris’ is costing Liverpool, who are now relying on Mohamed Salah leaving for AFCON to fix their season. But why can’t we all just enjoy the 18-point crisis clubs?

There are also mails on comparing grief and concern that everyone’s going a bit OTT on Declan Rice. Send your thoughts on anything and everything to theeditor@football365.com.

‘Hubris gripping Slot’ to cost Liverpool
Every week the football media loves to declare a team ‘in crisis.’ Sometimes after one defeat. Clearly Liverpool are a team in crisis. An astounding losing streak. Not just the scores but the manner of the losses. The idea that Klopp might return, though, is ludicrous. You would have to be in a bunker over the last few years not to realize that there appeared to be some friction between Michael Edwards and Jurgen Klopp.

After being lauded as the second coming, upon returning to Liverpool and hiring Richard Hughes, who oversaw the Liverpool Galactico project, that would be seen as an admission of failure. Should Slot be sacked? I’m not sure, but again, another admission of failure, should they do it.

The irony is that Edwards and Hughes addressed the very issues the media was criticizing. They re-signed big-name players whose contracts were nearing their end (two out of three – maybe the wrong ones?) and began to refresh a squad that was becoming age-heavy and also updating it to suit the evolving style of football, shifting from aggressive pressing to a more controlled game. Except they missed the boat on the defence. Again.

Compare to This Arsenal team, squad are incredible. True depth across all positions. Energy, intensity,  confidence. Taking on a strong Bayern very comfortably. (Mind you, says a lot about Real Madrid that This Liverpool equally handled them comfortably, doesn’t it.)

If Slot were to go, it won’t be to Klopp. I am sure it would be someone like Glasner or Iraola. Managers who are pragmatic, have a structure, coach well, optimize with what they have and bring along new and young players.

While Slot was adaptable and pragmatic last year, hubris appears to have gripped him this season. Did he get ahead of himself, letting title success inflate his judgment into overambitious overhauls that have lost the plot? Why cram most new signings, many without Premier League experience, after a rushed pre-season and scant time for chemistry, into the lineup from day one? Injuries and bans explained some gaps, but with chances to revert to the reliable core that he used last year and steady the ship before phasing in one or two newcomers, it looks like he opted for dramatic upheaval instead. This shift from his prior tight rotation to almost experimental integration seems to have fueled chaos and defensive lapses.

There’s a lot of blame to go around here. Edwards and Hughes throwing out the tried and trusted new signing playbook, Slot throwing team selection to the wind and players just not having the needed intensity and focus, which are the bread and butter of the EPL. Having said that, sacking a manager to simply get a short term bounce is a relegation trick – that rarely works in the long run.

Even with all these losses, Liverpool are still only a 2 or 3 game win streak from top 4 places – everyone seems to be having issues of one sort or another and they will most likely get to the next round of Champions League. So a poor season by comparison to last year and compared to how well Arsenal are this year but…
Paul McDevitt

READ MORE: Who will be the next manager of Liverpool after Arne Slot sack?

Salah leaving for AFCON the Liverpool fix
Reading the mailbox over the last few days I think most reasons and theories around the Liverpool demise have been reviewed and discussed in detail (maybe apart from missing Diaz as a wonderful false 9 who pressed like a madman and created space for Mo). What is disappointing are people acting like Harry Hindsight and explaining where they went wrong and whose fault it is from Slot, now moving onto Richard Hughes and the strange / incorrect / faulty transfer strategy. In the summer I would suggest everyone assumed Liverpool had absolutely ‘won the window’.

Slot explained last season that he admired the way PSG played with a very high press and assumed that as premier league winners everyone would sit back in a low block so we had to be ultra attacking. Both Kerkez & Frimpong were bought as attacking full backs. Frimpong had won the Bundesliga and Kerkez was considered one of the most promising left backs in the Premier league. Conor Bradley was considered someone who could ‘kick on’ and Robbo still had a year left and it seemed an ideal scenario for him to hand over the baton to Kerkez through the season.

VVD was given a massive contract as he was imperious last year and seemed to have a few decent years left in him. Guehi was agreed but it was Palace who couldn’t find a replacement. Signing Leoni was a coup, he looked brilliant but unfortunately is out for the season leaving us light. Trent learnt fluent Spanish in a month apparently….

In midfield we didn’t need anything. Szobo Mac & Grav were the perfect midfield 3 with Jones and Endo considered reasonable back up. Wirtz is considered Germanys best player who could unlock a low block, difficult defences and help us win the champions league. Bayern were not happy when we outbid them. Upfront we decided to sell Nunez as he wasn’t good enough, Diaz as he wanted to go and at 29 we didn’t want to give him a massive contract and Jota (RIP). Just buying Ekitike wasn’t enough as he can’t play 70 games. Getting Isak as well was considered Football Manager levels of talent. Mo banged in his best stats and was top scorer and assister, why wouldn’t we give him a new contract.

What has happened since has been an absolute mess. Alisson injured, Kerkez not performing, Konate thinking about Madrid, Bradley not improving, Frimpong getting injured and when he does play getting in Mo’s way, Mac Alister not 100% fit, etc etc etc.

The point is we had a plan, we executed a huge overhaul and our ‘infamous’ net spend was very decent. It hasn’t worked, but Slot and the team deserve our patience, understanding and support. Whether it’s a formation change, back to Klopps system, changing of the press, waiting for injured players to return or just dropping Konate, there is a lot to deal with that cannot be fixed overnight… or at this rate over 6 months.

Once Mo goes to AFCON try Isak & Ekitike up front with Wirtz roaming and defend a little deeper as our high press has gone. Easier said than done I know. We don’t need Semenyo, we do need Guehi or a decent alternative.
Hong Kong Ian (loving the gloating from the Old Trafford clowns who have a huge mess of their own to worry about…people in glass houses etc etc etc.) LFC

READ MORE: Big Weekend: Chelsea v Arsenal, Tottenham, Arne Slot, Michael Keane

Grief comparison
HanKolo, Vietnam just makes Micky P’s comment look even more accurate and correct. The point about a player dying in their prime dying suddenly… And you mention Kobe Bryant. He was retired for 4 years at that point, well beyond his prime by a decade at least and very few of those players on the Lakers when they won that year were there when he won was with them. Can we stop dismissing the impact Jota death has had or comparing it to other instances. I thought we all realized that people deal with grief differently.
Dion Byrne

After the Munich air disaster of 1958 decimated the Manchester United squad, a patched up team of reserve team players, loans, and 4 actual survivors from the crash – Dennis Viollet, Harry Gregg, Bill Foulkes and Bobby Charlton – managed to rally a run to the FA Cup final, winning 3-0 over Sheffield Wednesday in the 5th round, drawing 2-2 against WBA then winning the replay 1-0 in the 6th round. They drew the semi-finals 2-2 against Fulham before winning the replay 5-3, ultimately falling just short in the finals, going down 2-0 to Bolton Wanderers. Bill Foulkes was quoted as saying – “We had to play on. We had to do it for the lads who never came back. If we’d stopped, then they really would have died in vain.”

Bobby Charlton said in the intervening years – “We played that season driven by the memory of our friends.” And Harry Gregg described the FA Cup run as a tribute – “Every match was for those who had been lost.” A reminder if needed that the crash claimed 23 lives, including 8 (eight!) fellow teammates and 3 staff members, yet instead of justifiably wallowing in grief, these 4 survivors somehow picked themselves up off the ground (figuratively and literally) and displayed unbelievable resilience in the face of such tragedy.
Sanjit (no excuses) Randhawa, Kuala Lumpur.   Just enjoy the crises

The thing about Liverpool and Manchester United being bad at football this season, and Manchester City last season, is that objectively it’s very very funny. It makes me laugh every time I see a new 3-0 defeat.

It’s funny to think that Slot took all the “winning with Klopp’s team” digs so personally that he spent 400m trying to prove that he could do it again only for it to blow up in his face so dramatically. We’re all so self-serious all the time about these things but there’s no real reason to be.

Sincerely
ADRIAN (LFC fan)

18-point crisis clubs
All the crisis Clubs; Spurs, Newcastle, Man Utd, Liverpool and Everton are on 18 points. Which I thought was quite interesting. And while we are on crisis Clubs, you can always rely on Everton to be more crisisey than Liverpool. Liverpool didn’t even play today, and Everton managed to enable Liverpool to go above them.
Colin Brown

OTT Rice
I was watching Soccer Saturday pre-match today and Michael Dawson labelled Declan Rice the best midfielder in Europe, and probably the world. Previously, in midweek, the Guardian ran an opinion piece where the headline stated he was actually the best PLAYER in Europe right now, the article which followed contained the phrase “the continent’s standout footballer”.

Yes. That’s right. Not just the best CM, the best PLAYER. Now, far be it for me to piss on anyone’s parade, but doesn’t all this seem just a little OTT? It seems the customary English pre-tournament bravado has started even earlier than usual.

After all, it’s only 18 months ago that Rice could hardly string a pass together in an England shirt, being given the runaround in midfield by the “might” of teams like Serbia, Denmark, Slovakia and Switzerland. He was one of England’s worst players in the whole tournament.

Has he really improved that much since then? I’m not so sure. I suspect next summer we will probably see him chasing shadows in the searing US heat, as some mid-ranking nation once again give England and Rice a basic lesson in how to just keep hold of the football.
Andy H, Swansea. 

‘Pretending people hate black players’
Good point Garrett, so good in fact I actually went back and read your entire email and changed my response below. I agreed and wrote this after sentence no.1 and you kinda covered the points i made but alas, here it is anyway. A rich, entitled angle on the whole thing.

The fact is the media hate football players perceived to be ‘flash’. It goes much further than Beckham and pals. Even down to relatively shit footballers who were seen to be flashy because they didnt shave with sandpaper. Basically, media demands that footballers either go immediately home silently after a match and wait with teeth gritted till the next match – ONLY thinking about the next 3 points, or they go straight down mines for an honest shift. Never, ever, ever say you are interested in ‘fashion’.

So yeh media hates black players blah blah, but really its flash players – remember footballers are meant to be ‘lucky’ versions of regular people, not unrelatable moguls focused on different professional domains with their football careers appearing as an optional extra.  Careers that we the proletariat, would often kill to be lucky enough to  experience.

Honestly can’t remember anyone complaining about nigel reo coker, Ashley Young, ledley the king, nedum onuoha, web brown, etc.  You know, boring or normal black players. *(insert 99.9% of black players) Yet the regular victims we cite all have fashion labels/collections/extracurricular interests.

Observationally, we just seem to hate players that treat football as a secondary interest, to us it must be the most important part of anyones life. We can all keep pretending people hate black players but make believe has never helped anyone/anything long term. We, the poor, basic and averagely capable peoples, hate flashy, successful or entitled people.

We don’t give them the credit for the work put in to get to be flashy, they just see the equivalent of a class war (remeber this isn’t the same kind of celebrity that can occur from simply flashing tits, you have to work to be an athlete and it should be respected). They are rich, young and in your face, when ‘we’ would do anything to be there and do it for free (like fuck we would).

Its a class war not a race war. We’re all idiots for thinking otherwise and sadly you often have to be exposed to the other side of life to know that – which requires great luck, fortune or hard work. They don’t want you to know and they are winning because you fell for it all.
Moses (I went to a 1% school in the world full of asian and african royals and western billionaires, race was the most irrelevant thing, only money matters, sorry. They are all now in their 40’s and nothing has changed but poor people race discussions are always a great source of humor)

If you are so desperate to hate and blame others – go for wallet over melanin…. i love Ian Wright but he’s a part of the problem – not the simplistic, basic problem but the larger, societal problem.