Controversial opinions and asking difficult questions

I missed the game at the weekend and have literally just caught up on a 10 minute highlight reel of the game but that short cameo showed me enough to know that it was just rinse and repeat from what we’ve seen in recent weeks – a misfiring strike force, coupled with poor defending so I’m not going to bother writing another article that just goes over the same issues we’ve been discussing for weeks. Instead, I’m going to throw the cat amongst the pigeons.

Let’s start with the obvious – Stroppy Salah. I’ve got absolutely no time for players behaving like that, be it at our club or any other. I remember when Kepa refused to be subbed for Chelsea in that cup game, just prior to the penalty shootout. Sarri was apoplectic on the touchline and Kepa simply refused to go off. I remember saying at the time that if I’d been Sarri, I’d have got the stewards or even the police to drag him off the pitch if necessary and he’d never have played for me again. By allowing him to remain on the pitch, he effectively dug his own grave as he no longer had any authority or credibility and had I been Klopp on Saturday, I’d have told Salah to sit back down and he wouldn’t have played another minute this season. Who exactly does he think he is? This isn’t a young hotheaded kid we’re talking about, this is one of our senior pros, a talismanic figure of the Klopp era throwing his toys out the pram on the touchline, needing to be dragged away from the manager and then exacerbating things with his “If I speak now there will be fire” comment to a journo in the tunnel, taking a page out of his agent’s book on annoying, cryptic comments.

Personally, I’d have binned Salah when he started doing all those interviews about his new contract, although I can understand why the club wouldn’t want to lose their (arguably) most valuable asset on a free but I felt it showed the measure of the man, particularly the first interview which he gave when the team was in a really bad place and Klopp has just lost his mother. His new contract was more important than all that though. In truth, he gets away with murder. I wasn’t at all surprised that Mane lost it with him that time. I mean all goalscorers have a selfish streak but Salah is just ridiculous at times, just shooting from anywhere cos it’s all about him and his numbers/records. Even the fact he’s our penalty taker is a joke. He only has something like a 60% conversion rate from the spot this season and to be honest, I don’t think I’ve EVER seen him take a good penalty. Every time if the keeper goes the right way he’s saving it. Milner was and Mac Allister is much more accomplished penalty takers than Salah. He gets to take them because he’s chasing individual records but the team should always come first and in my opinion, it doesn’t for Salah. Saturday was a ridiculous show of disrespect from him, he clearly thinks he’s undroppable despite the fact he’s been absolutely dreadful for weeks and that is not an attitude we should be accepting from any player. Personally, if an offer from Saudi came in for him this summer, I would take it. I certainly hope we’re not going to have another contract circus with him next season.

As for Klopp himself, he’s just treading water now and looks like he can’t wait to get out the door. Things clearly haven’t been rosy behind the scenes for a while, we saw Michael Edwards leave and a year later a mass exodus with Edwards replacement Julian Ward quitting less than a year into his big promotion and being followed out the door by the likes of Ian Graham and the club doctor among others. The fact Edwards is now returning when Klopp leaves, certainly suggests rumours of a falling out between the pair are true. Whether the incident with Salah at the weekend is in any way connected to anything else going on, or purely an isolated incident because he’s got the hump at being dropped I don’t know but I suspect it’s the latter. Either way, I never thought I’d say this but it probably is the right time for Klopp to move on and someone new to come in and freshen things up.

That brings me onto our new manager. A pretty left field appointment we have to say and I’m sure a large section of our fanbase had never heard of Arne Slot. I certainly don’t know enough about him to have any kind of educated opinion on him but I do know it’s a MASSIVE step up from Feyenoord to Liverpool for any manager but especially one without bags of experience and absolutely zero experience of either playing or managing at elite level.

In the club’s defence, there aren’t a host of top managers out there at the moment and once Xabi ruled himself out the running, there really wasn’t an obvious candidate for the job and so maybe Slot ticks the most boxes out of the other manager’s available at the moment but his appointment certainly isn’t what you’d describe as inspiring, although I’d love nothing more than for him to come in and cement himself as one of the next generation of top coaches.

I have a niggling feeling though… It’s INCREDIBLY rare that a very successful, long term manager leaves a club and it works out for his immediate successor. You only have to look at the mess United have been in since Fergie left to see the effect it can have on a club when a manager who’s built the club in his image moves on. They’ve comfortably outspent the rest of the league in the past decade without ever coming close to winning it. Now they’ve made some very poor decisions, Moyes was never the man for that job and then they’ve flip flopped between managers with totally different philosophies and styles of play and so have ended up where you see them now, languinshing in the Europa league spots, with a team and club as a whole that completely lacks any kind of identity.

Arsenal are another example. Wenger left and even a manager as astute and experienced as Unai Emery couldn’t stop the wheels coming off and it’s taken them years to rebuild to become challengers again and have also been spending £250 odd million every summer for the last few years to get there and we all know Slot ain’t gonna get that kind of financial backing.

So here’s my lingering feeling. While I fully admit to being overly cynical of pretty much everything, I can’t help but wonder if Slot is the cheap option to be the inevitable fall guy that follows Klopp. If he’s successful then great but if not, the squad is in a pretty good place and is full of players at a good age, so I don’t think anyone feels the team is in need of massive investment, so it’s not like we’ll be giving Slot massive money to spend on new players and he’ll be lucky if he’s being paid a quarter of Klopp’s wage and so wouldn’t be ridiculously expensive to get rid of and perhaps by the end of next season, or certainly the year after, our top target Xabi will be ready to make the next step in his career.

Now I know what you’re all thinking. The club wouldn’t be that cynical but I remember everyone said that very thing to me when we signed Ben Davies. I said from the off that he’d been signed as a training cone and I wouldn’t be surprised if he never made a single appearance for us. “We wouldn’t do that!!” a number of you protested but that’s exactly what he was and exactly what we did.

Anyway, right now I just can’t wait for this season to end. It’s painful watching the Klopp era fizzle out with a whimper and I feel desperately sorry for the man who’s brought us so much joy and excitement during his time, that he seems to be finishing his time with us under something of a cloud. I guess that’s life though. Fairytales are for children.

So, as you’ve probably guessed if you’ve bothered reading all that, I’m not in the best of moods tonight after a crazy weekend at work and it’s funny how much your team can impact your mood. When the team are flying, they being pleasure and escapism from the daily grind but when they’re rubbish, you just feel like they’re kicking you when you’re down. Something feels different at the moment though as unlike the Hodgson era and even a couple of seasons under Brendan, this team isn’t rubbish. They’re just not playing for whatever reason, something we’ve never seen before in the Klopp era.

There are some big decisions to be made ahead of next season, particularly concerning our forward line, although I suspect they’ll be made more by Edwards than Slot. At the moment, only Jota and Diaz are worthy of their place in the squad but the former can’t stay fit and the latter’s finishing has regressed horribly this season. Salah we’ve discussed, Darwin couldn’t hit a barn door, doesn’t understand the offside rule and hasn’t really progressed much at all in two seasons and Gakpo has just looked lost for most of the season, utterly devoid of confidence. We need to find a way to get our forward firing again for next season because it’s been poor finishing above everything else that has completely derailed our season in this past couple of months.

Anyway there you have it, the shit is stirred and I look forward to reading your opinions. Walk on!!