Liverpool player ‘bad photocopy’ of himself as ‘worst transfer window ever’ named | OneFootball

Liverpool fans are split about whether Arne Slot should still be the manager, but they are united in thinking change must come.

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It helps to be Scottish…

Every time I get sad about Liverpool I watch the goals vs Denmark by McTominay, Tierney and McLean to cheer myself up. Watched last night for the 87th time. Mike, LFC, Dubai

Arne Slot IN from these Liverpool fans

I have to question the reasoning of LFC fans pushing for Slot to be fired; Liverpool’s current DoF Richard Hughes has so far:

failed to get Mark Guehi whom actively wanted to come, and whom Palace were belatedly willing to sell.

spent 100+ million pounds on the defence and none of the three players signed would be first choice

spent 100+ million on the midfield, and Wirtz looks lost and ill-suited to the league, and we’re now finding out LFC mainly got him because of a promise to play him centrally; something that now looks like an impossible promise to honour.

spent 200+ million on forwards, of which he has a 50% success rate, and the club are without a replacement for Diaz.

And beyond his incredible record of organising incomings, he is ultimately the one responsible for agreeing who goes out the door, and he let Kostas go at left back without a fee on loan, and Quansah go out, and didn’t manage to sell Joe Gomez whom the club have been trying to offboard for some time now.

This is the guy you want to charge with replacing a league-winning manager?

LFC’s defending from set-pieces has been monstrously bad; Aaron Briggs took over as set-piece coach in September 2025. He needs to be under significant pressure to provide evidence to keep his job.

But beyond that, I still think Slot should have more time. Finding two centre backs, and maybe replacements for Kerkez and Mac Allister may well be easier than finding a new manager who’s willing to join LFC now.

Of course, my underlying fear is that Slot is another Martinez at Everton situation, and can’t actually coach a defensive shape and last year was muscle memory of the last guy, but I don’t think we have enough evidence to decide that just yet. Binning off Slot only for a new guy to arrive and potentially take one look at Kerkez, VVD and Konate and go ‘christ give me a new back four’ isn’t going to be a fast path to fixing this.

But then realistically, you do have moderate any support of Slot though, when he comes out with crass statements like “I liked how we reacted in transition in the first half” which clearly means he’s saying that the opposition shouldn’t be allowed to change their approach.

And after the Forest game, where he was outrageous and piled on the referees with his ranting diatribe about having no issues with the ref awarding Forest’s first goal, and that actually he thought their second goal for handball should also have been allowed and LFC were lucky.

I just don’t know why he keeps making these stupid statements; He was clearly meaning that Forest shouldn’t be allowed to try and score, which is just a ridiculous thing for him to definitely and categorically say. At least I think that’s how it works; let me know. Tom G

…Liverpool are abject, embarrassing sh*t. And I’ve never seen other fans so delighted by the misfortune of a rival, with many on social media openly admitting that this current clusterf*ck is unparalleled in its deliciousness.

Which begs the question…if our failure is the tastiest of all the schadenfreudes, are these rival fans inadvertently proving that Liverpool FC really does mean more? Unless they start enjoying our demise less, I believe they are. Check mate, my silly social media friends.

PS…You should know that we are hurting much more than fans of regular clubs would be hurting if they had to endure an equivalent crisis.

PPS…ARNE IN. And maximum love to our players who are currently in a very dark place. We’ll be with you all the way to the other side. Rob, LFC, NYC

Worst transfer window ever?

Let’s take a long, hard look at what our data heavy brains trust has accomplished:

Bursting the bank on Mo & Virgil was a mistake. Both are in a decline that probably started in February. Being blase over keeping Trent was also a mistake, we really miss him (especially Mo). He may have wanted to leave anyway, and his niggling injury issues of the last few years aren’t going away, but we should have fought much harder, and earlier, to keep him.

Conor Bradley has never reliably stayed fit, therefore signing an also injury prone Frimpong was a gamble that has backfired. I feel Jones & Szoboszlai have played more minutes at right back than our actual right backs this season. Kerkez has been a disaster. Robbo needs replacing, he was a weak link last season, and Kerkez was highly regarded, but bloody hell, he may be our worst regular starter since Roy Hodgson.

Having an ageing Virg, up and down Konate (who DEFINITELY seems distracted by his contract situation), and the made of glass Joe Gomez as your centre backs seemed a big risk even before the season started. Only signing an 18 year old CB (who unfortunately was immediately injured) is just negligent.

Our midfield three were excellent last season, but they ran themselves into the ground, which showed in our increasingly laboured performances in the spring. This has carried over into this season. Teams are simply running through us. Mac Allister in particular looks like a bad photocopy of the player he was. What does Endo have to do to get a game? Why did we loan Harvey Elliott after his excellent summer performances? Unai Emery doesn’t seem to fancy him, so maybe we’ll get him back in January.

Up front, well……Mo needs to be dropped, and not just for one game. He simply hasn’t been Mo, this season. Give Chiesa a run in the team, he’s earned it. I know Ekitike had the season’s stupidest sending off, but he’s been our best attacker. It’s not even close. Slot picking that other guy (I’ll get to him in a minute) ahead of Hugo has been a disaster. On the left, God we miss Luis Diaz. We need the solidity of three central midfielders, so when Wirtz is fit, he plays wide. Left or right, doesn’t matter right now, but we need physicality in the middle, to stop the whole teams running through us thing. I won’t discuss Jota, a tragedy that can’t be accounted for. Darwin Nunez needed upgrading, even though we could use his bull in a China shop energy right now.

Which brings me to Isak. Oy vey. A slow motion car crash of a saga that has damaged everyone involved. Isak behaved appallingly; he’s destroyed his reputation; he had no pre season, and has effectively cost himself 6 months of this season (at least, I expect); Pool encouraged his behaviour, even after they bought an £80m centre forward; this resulted in them taking their eye off the ball, not strengthening midfield and screwing up the Guehi transfer; Toon took the moral high ground despite encouraging Wissa to do the exact same thing to Brentford (morals in football? Don’t make me laugh); and by dragging the whole thing out before finally just giving up on the last day of the transfer window, ensured they couldn’t take advantage of the £125m fee. Now both our seasons are in the shit. Serves both clubs right.

Oh, I almost forgot goalkeepers. Alisson is brilliant when fit, but increasingly injury prone (bit of a pattern there?). Kelleher was superb last year and fully deserves to be a number one, at Pool or somewhere else. It was a hard decision, and the club may have got it right, if Mamardashvili goes on to be our number one next year. But so far, although he certainly looks like a good keeper, he lets in goals. Lots of them. And I can’t help thinking that’s a flaw in a goalkeeper.

Having said all that, I don’t remember too many pundits, journalists, fans, mailboxes etc saying Pool had f**ked it in August. The most criticism we got was of the “Not signing Guehi may cost them” variety. At first or even second glance it did not look like a transfer window that would lead to utter collapse. Which is why Arne Slot is now toast. His mistakes include not pushing to sign Guehi or strengthen central midfield. Playing unfit or out of form players. Changing the formation. Changing the tactics. Telling the world we’re bad at set pieces in a press conference. And now, finally, looking like Erik Ten Hag.

And you can’t recover from that. Stewart, Chicago (longest mail I’ve ever written, but, bloody hell, right?)

…Yes, this is 100% Captain Hindsight so I’m not trying to be clever but looking at Liverpool’s summer business the only guy they should have bought (that they did) is Ekitike – and maybe Frimpong as they needed cover post Trent.

After that if they bought Semenyo (Diaz replacement) and Guehi early all pretty much done. They would’ve saved a load of wedge too meaning they could’ve kept Quansah.

What a waste of money. Duck (to be clear I thought they smashed the transfer window)

Will West Ham kill him off?

It’s now P38 W19 D4 L15 in competitive matches, starting with the Plymouth defeat in the FA Cup. Including 14 losses in the last 30.

You might argue that a fair portion of those losses came after the league was effectively won.

But then you could counter that by saying the run of 7 wins to kick off this season was a bit of a freak, and a reasonable case could be made that they could just as easily have lost all 7.

One thing is for sure. Since that February day at Home Park, the performances and results have not been anywhere near good enough.

Another thumping at West Ham on Sunday and he’s probably a goner. Andy H, Swansea

…I don’t think you can really blame the manager’s tactics for that one.

One of our CBs decides to play volleyball from a corner in the 5th minute and the other takes an air swipe to let the opposition in. That’s less about tactics than mental preparation, which is clearly lacking.

Problem is that the players look very much like they’ve stopped playing for him, and once that happens it’s done. Saw a stat that in our last three games we’ve scored 1 from 6.59xG and conceded 10 from 5.39xGA. As Napoleon said, you’d rather have a lucky general than a good one.

I think the only chance he has if he’s still in charge at the weekend is to make big changes – Gakpo, Salah, Konate and Mac at least simply cannot start that game – they realistically shouldn’t start whoever the manager is based on recent form. That might jolt us out of this rut, but otherwise it’ll just be more of the same. Tom, Andover

…Didn’t think we would lose to Forest after last season and we were humbled convincingly by Sean Dyche. Didn’t believe PSV could prevail at Anfield, yet we capitulate tonight to lose resoundingly. Reckon we cannot possibly conspire to lose at West Ham, so Jarrod Bowen will score a brace and we’ll score none in East London in three days time. It’s been a season for the ages this one. No sweet without the bitter and all that, but Christ this is grim stuff on Merseyside at the minute. Eric, Los Angeles CA (Imbibing a few extra for Thanksgiving this year…)

Arne Slot giving off Brendan Rodgers vibes

Surely this has to be the end for Slot. It just keeps getting worse and yet he does nothing but repeat the same thing over and over again. Virtually the same line up every time and yet there’s an alarming level of disjointedness in the play as if the players have no clue whatsoever.

Slot is giving out serious Brendan Rodgers vibes. There are a few differences but I think they have a lot in common.

Both finished on 84 points after individually powered seasons, one couldn’t get over the line the other one did but was perhaps lucky not to have faced serious competition.

One couldn’t keep his star man and was quickly found out after failing living up to expectations, the other did keep his man but is also struggling with expectations.

Both frauds share the sick desire for playing players out of position to limited effect, Rodgers with Can and Slot with Szobo.

Both managers are cowards who wave the white flag at the first sign of trouble, Rodgers throwing the Real Madrid game only to lose anyway against Chelsea. Slot did the same against Palace and it turns out it was pretty pointless. Things hardly improved and we still suffered the injuries that presumably he was trying to avoid.

Both managers seem incapable of rebuilding a new team. Without Suarez, Rodgers had us believe that our chances of winning games depended on an injury prone Sturridge, until a competent manager arrived and proved it was actually possible for the same players to thrive without him.

Slot is doing the same thing Salah and seems intent on making us a one man team. The best game Liverpool have had this season, which is a low bar tbh actually came without him. We are winning 5:1 and yet the manager feels the need to bring on Salah, presumably so he can statpad. The only thing he did in that game was deny Flo his first goal for the club something he has done on quite a few occasions because apparently only he is allowed to be the star man for the team.

The shocking thing is that our fixture list should actually be getting easier and yet we are getting humiliated by small teams. The cowardly manager yet again passed up the opportunity to give Chiesa a meaningful start, Gomez and Endo were also left on the bench despite players in their positions struggling.

9 defeats in 12 is not acceptable for most clubs let alone the Champions. Slot had multiple opportunities to try something different, maybe play different players or actually just play players in their right positions but nope he kept the same old nonsense. I sincerely hope he’s gone by Sunday. Philip Correa

Crisis baton passed on again…

Turned the Liverpool match on for the last couple of minutes. Thanks to them for retaking crisis club status. That was an uncomfortable 48 hours. Shane Tallon, ManUtd, Dublin

But Liverpool are grieving…

Anyone who has lost a loved one, be it suddenly or not, will know how difficult grief is to manage.

These players are expected to go out and perform in elite level sport in front of millions watching as if nothing has happened.

They are grieving. They are in shock. They are upset, sad, angry, beside themselves – their friend died suddenly in the summer and now they have to go out and work relentlessly every week.

Every single day they will be faced with reminders about him. And even if they have a good few days, it’ll hit them again out of nowhere.

Grief puts the kibosh on everything, especially if you try and ignore it or work through it. It demands you pause.

It’s no shock at all that Liverpool’s performances have fallen apart this season. Even losing 5% in elite level sport means you’re punished every week.

This season for them is a write-off for as long as they can’t properly grieve their teammate and friend.

We can talk as much as we like about tactics, players out of position, flop signings, whatever – the simple fact is that the entire club is grieving and there is no getting past that. Liam