The conversion rate bar chart ... we are 30-45% off the rate produced during the 3 seasons we earned 90+ points ... ugh!
Not only is Mo's shooting performance poor but we know his xG is also down from last season ... if Alex were fit & on form, it probably wouldn't matter as much as it does
I want us to sign Minteh to succeed Mo at RF but, from the looks of the outcome of big chances table, we desperately need Alex to get back to his 2023-24 & 2024-25 form
You’re my boy. So I’m not choosing violence. But as someone who has to deal with analysis all day and shout at the sky, ‘causation is essential to explaining things’, I will dip in here.
The non-negotiable starting point here is that this season hasn’t been built on a normal base. If you don’t anchor the analysis there, you end up describing patterns really well but not fully explaining why those patterns exist.
The pattern you’ve highlighted is strong. The split between “created” big chances and opportunistic ones is genuinely useful, and the Salah/Gakpo angles are good spots.
But when you break it down, none of this is especially odd. It’s quite predictable. Structured big chances — the ones created through combinations — are the most sensitive to sharpness. They rely on timing, spacing, coordination, body shape, repetition. If you’re even slightly off, those margins go quickly. The pass is a touch off, the run is mistimed, the finish isn’t set. What should be a clean big chance either degrades or never fully materialises.
By contrast, the chaotic ones don’t need that. Errors, rebounds, loose balls — they’re instinctive. They bypass the system. So if your system is even slightly dulled, those chances become relatively easier to convert. That split you’ve identified is a great diagnosis.
But causation is key. The piece leans into new signings, low blocks, final third recoveries not turning into shots. But they sit one level below the real question. Why is the system not sharp enough to consistently generate and convert high-quality chances?
And here it is.
The drop in big chance volume confirms the system isn’t producing enough clean final actions. The underperformance on created big chances confirms the execution layer is off. The reliance on opportunistic chances confirms instinct is outperforming structure. And the final-third recovery point is probably the biggest clue. If those aren’t turning into shots, the first two actions after the regain aren’t sharp enough. That’s function, not randomness.
The oscillation reinforces it. This team can look fine one game — chances coming, goals scored — look blunt or outright abject the next. That’s not how a purely tactical problem behaves. Tactical issues are usually consistent. This is variance driven by execution levels. When the sharpness is there, the structure holds. When it drops, everything collapses.
And you’ve effectively got a £125m reference point in Alexander Isak sitting in the physio room having played eight games all season. That’s your primary box presence, your best natural finisher, and your most reliable converter of structured chances.
So you’ve got creators operating in a slightly dulled system, finishers who aren’t elite box operators being asked to convert high-value chances, and a lack of consistent reference points in the penalty area. That combination is always going to drag down both volume and conversion of big chances.
RE Salah: the underperformance is real and material. Finishing at that level is tied to rhythm and repeatability. When the system is slightly off, the chances arrive less cleanly, the setups are worse, and the margins tighten. That’s when inefficiency shows up more aggressively.
RE: Gakpo, at some point “zero assists” stops being bad luck and becomes a sign that the final layer of execution isn’t quite landing across the team.
So, it’s not that Liverpool have a strange statistical hole around big chances. It’s that they still have enough attacking structure to generate situations, but not enough consistent sharpness — or the right profiles available — to repeatedly turn those situations into high-quality chances and goals.
The numbers look odd. The mechanism behind them isn’t.
The mechanism is the causation. The number is just output.
Just on the difference between this year and last year being a Slot deficiency, the lack of an adequate LW to even partially replace the Diaz output is one of the difficulties we have had this season, leaving the Diogo situation aside.
That's a Hughes decision, tbf. I'm still scratching my head at spending so much on Isak after buying Ekitike for the exact same position (leaving as side possibilities of Ekitike on the left?).
I'm agnostic on Slot atm, it's outside my control, but I do have some sympathy fot him having an inferior rotation option both there and as CF due to Isaks injury and lack of fitness.
Having a LW score a few and presenting a threat would also take much focus off Salah which would be a positive and less pressure on him wouldn't hurt his options and finishing of the team overall.
The non-negotiable starting point is that this isn’t a clean coaching environment. The system is operating without key profiles and consistent availability in critical roles — that’s a recruitment issue. On top of that, the entire pre-season base that builds tactical, physical and psychological cohesion was disrupted by external events outside anyone’s control. If you don’t anchor it there, you end up misattributing structural problems to the coach.
You’re right on the LW point. When that role isn’t a proper profile, the attack tilts. That side stops being a threat, so everything shifts toward Salah. Tighter angles, more bodies, worse decision windows. His finishing then looks like the issue, when it’s actually the load being funnelled onto him.
Where it stops short is treating that in isolation. Because centrally, the system has been built around a striker profile like Isak — and he hasn’t been there. That’s your reference point gone. No consistent box presence, no reliable end-point to moves, less gravity on centre-backs. The plan was clearly to move toward a more striker-centric model — the striker as the primary finisher — which is where the game is trending again. But without that profile available, the structure loses its anchor.
Layer it together and the picture is clear. Weak left-side threat, no central reference for progression and control, and one elite outlet carrying attacking output now in natural decline. That’s not a tactical flaw — it’s an imbalanced profile structure operating without a proper base.
This is where recruitment bites. Not in volume, but in distribution. There’s duplication at CF with Ekitike and Isak, but no real LW redundancy. So when one piece drops out, there’s no way to rebalance. The knock-on effects show up in spacing, timing and chance quality — all of which are already degraded by the disrupted pre-season.
That’s why the outputs look the way they do. Movements are less synchronised, spacing is easier to defend, actions become forced. Big chances drop, and conversion drops with them. It’s not just finishing — it’s the quality of the situations being created.
Slot isn’t blameless — the fallback hasn’t been robust enough. But this isn’t a coach imposing the wrong idea. It’s a system missing key profiles, lacking a proper physical and tactical base, and trying to function anyway.
Fix the wide profiles — left and right — and have Isak available, and the same structure looks very different. Until then, this isn’t a clean test of the coach. It’s a compromised system producing compromised outputs. And that’s before you even layer in the midfield, which is ultimately the control module that determines how well everything else functions.
Hi SK, trying to follow your line of thinking ... are you arguing that "flaws in the system" (i.e. tactics) are the cause of underperformance and not "player-related factors" (form, consistency, quality, availability & adjustment to the league)?
No — it’s not “tactics vs players,” and that is the issue.
We can’t separate tactics from players, and we can’t ignore the pre-season baseline that underpins both. That’s where physical capacity and tactical automation get built. If that’s disrupted, players don’t just lose fitness — players lose repeatability and timing. Actions start right but don’t get completed. Presses are late, spacing stretches, sharpness drops. It then presents as a system flaw, when it’s actually execution decay.
So what we’re seeing is a system being executed by players dealing with availability gaps, slight physical decline, and a compromised base from the outset.
That’s why the outputs look off — especially low-margin actions like finishing. It’s not a flawed idea in isolation, and it’s not purely player form either. It’s a system that currently can’t be performed at the required level, so everything downstream looks worse than it actually is. And there’s no change in system that will mask that issue.
The cleaner way to frame it is this: the underperformance is systemic, driven by a disrupted base, with both “tactical” and “player” issues as symptoms — not separate causes.
Reading your response to Noel's comment & mine and I think I'm following now ... thanks for your patience & let me know if I've got the gist below.
Agree with your point that "the plan" was to build the attack around Alex in the center supported by Florian, assuming they would produce at elite levels. The "plan" also assumed that Mo would continue to be a threat and that Cody could reproduce what he did last season. None of those assumptions have held up and there is no "quick fix" when things go that far off plan.
Not signing Guehi + injuries at the back = further instability (playing Dom out of position, fatigue from playing Virg/Ibou/Ryan/Dom constantly, limited ability to rotate Macca & Ibou when form dipped) = a knock-on effect on poor creation & finishing + game-state challenges when fatigue means mistakes at the back.
Added to that ... I also agree that disruptions to pre-season ARE another cause of the poor outcomes. That's probably always true but, when 75% of the team loses a close friend and we have a massive squad turnover, it's especially impactful. (3 starters + 3 important reserves leave with 6 new players arriving).
Very little of these issues is down to Arne. I find it hard to believe that he pushed to sell Lucho or thought it wise to save a few quid and not push thru the Guehi transfer in July. He has done a solid job of changing the plan on the fly in response these unexpected issues, most of which were not of his own making. It's frustrating when "fan banter" doesn't assign any weight to these factors especially given the whole YNWA appeal of our club.
I keep thinking about how it must have been for the new players too, the atmosphere they had to come into. It must've been awful for them (in a different way to those that knew Diogo, obviously).
The attack being built around Isak with Wirtz connecting and Salah/Gakpo maintaining output wasn’t just an idea, it was a set of dependencies. Remove the central reference, destabilise the left, and add even a small drop-off on Salah, and the whole thing loses its anchor.
Same with the defensive side. That feeds everything else. Lack of rotation → fatigue → slower actions → worse spacing → less control → more transitions → more pressure on the attack to be perfect. It’s one loop.
On pre season, you’ve got emotional shock, reduced physical loading, new players coming in, and less time to build automatisms. That hits physical capacity, tactical cohesion and sharpness all at once. From there, everything becomes less repeatable — and when actions aren’t repeatable, performance oscillates.
That’s why there’s no quick fix. You’re not tweaking a system, you’re trying to stabilise something that never properly settled.
Slot is not blameless, but most of what he’s dealing with sits upstream. Recruitment gaps, availability, and a compromised base. So what you’re seeing is adaptation under constraint, not implementation failure.
The system never had the stable conditions required to function properly in the first place. So people saying it failed is like Neo thinking he’s bending the spoon. There is no spoon.
I couldn’t care less what the angry fans are shouting. Old man. Clouds. They’ll find something to shout at.
The one issue i would have is Slot's influence on the team. There's no perfect environment for any manager, much of what they decide to do is basically taking a punt on a way to solve an issue. The top tier managers make decisions that seem to work most of the time, this success rate falls as the ability of the managers decreases.
We don't have a large squad so every player needs to be used well and players brought into the team to paper over cracks in abilities lost from injury/suspension/form.
I think Klopp did this well after losing all CBs and the rapid decline in midfielders in two different seasons. It can be argued that the reserves now are poorer than then but there was a structure in place already that was tweaked to minimise the losses in both areas in those years. It wasn't beautiful but it worked.
I find it difficult to say that Slot has done enough in bringing in players to rest/rotate/develop those coming in, as least until failure to qualify for CL became an issue. I don't want to write a hagiography of Klopp but I think it's becoming more apparent every day that Slot doesn't possess the abilities we need right now. I hate criticising our manager (bar Hodgson) but I do think it's a question that needs asking and sooner rather than later.
Our buying of players from systems of 3-5-2 styles and Alonso being available would indicate there's a shift in higher levels confidence in Slot going forward?
Coaches do live in a world of imperfect information and imperfect options. A lot of coaching is exactly that — solving problems with incomplete tools and making the right compromises. It’s also fair to say Slot hasn’t solved enough of the problems robustly. The fallback systems haven’t been strong enough, and with limited squad options, that’s been exposed. However, the Klopp comparison falls short on three marks.
First, Klopp is a superior coach. That’s not controversial. But more importantly, he’s a mature one. Slot is early in his growth curve. Seven years as a head coach is not long. The scar tissue from repeated setbacks — which informs better decision-making — isn’t fully there yet. So asking him to handle a scenario equivalent to “first real setback = maximum severity” is a completely different test. Most coaches fail that climb. The comparison isn’t clean.
Second, Klopp had structure. Even in 20/21, when the centre-backs dropped, the rest of the team was in Year 3 of a fully embedded system. Physical levels were set, roles were clear, automatisms were ingrained. So when Williams and Phillips came in, the rest of the team compensated naturally. That’s what a mature system gives you — elasticity under stress.
Third, Klopp didn’t solve it immediately either. Form dipped when Virgil went, dipped further when Gomez went, and collapsed when Matip went. His first solution — breaking the midfield — made things worse. He only stabilised things later, once he committed to Phillips and Williams. By then, it was already a fight for fourth. The point is simple: even elite coaches mismanage the first phase of a crisis. The differentiator is how they recover.
None of those conditions apply cleanly to this season.
This squad lacks athletic security, role clarity and structural continuity. It’s a team between identities, missing key profiles, without an embedded system. That was already the backdrop. Then the pre-season base — the one moment to build physical capacity, tactical cohesion and repeatable patterns — was disrupted. Once that base goes, everything built on top of it becomes fragile.
Papering over cracks only works when the structure is stable. This one isn’t.
That’s why rotation hasn’t worked cleanly either. Rotation isn’t just using more players — it’s preserving function. If the players coming in can’t maintain timing, spacing and intensity, you’re not rotating within a system. You’re changing it. And when the system is already unstable, those changes compound the problem. That’s why you’ve seen constant adaptation without resolution.
On recruitment, this is about profiles, not systems. Buying players who have played in a back three doesn’t signal a loss of faith in the coach. Most of these decisions predate the disruption anyway. The intent is to build a squad with adaptable, system-agnostic profiles. The issue isn’t direction — it’s distribution. There’s duplication in some areas, gaps in others, and no redundancy in key roles.
So the conclusion is straightforward.
Slot’s in-season problem solving hasn’t been good enough at times. That’s fair. But he’s operating in a low-probability, high-severity environment — one that’s unlikely to repeat. This isn’t a normal stress test. It’s an extreme one, early in his cycle.
It’s also not valid to isolate the coach as the central problem. The conditions aren’t stable enough for that conclusion. Recruitment imbalance, disrupted preparation, injuries and natural player decline all sit upstream of his decisions. The honest test of a coach is how they perform in a stable environment. We haven’t seen that yet.
Arne has made some mistakes this season. I get your point that our performance was worse bc of fatigue and how rotation could have helped. Where I struggle is...the squad Hughes handed Arne wasn't of EPL/UCL quality so, with the stakes very high, who were his options for rotation?
At forward, the issue wasn't with rotation. It was the fitness & form of Mo & Alex (2 of our 3 top wage earners). We expected those 2 to produce 35-40 goals in the EPL (not 7). Arne leaned on Cody, Hugo & Flo out of necessity. Could he have started Fede or Rio? Yes, but they weren't going to replace the production of your 2 best goal-scorers.
Same with defense. With Gio's season over in September, Joey was the only cover at CB and he wasn't fit. At RB, Conor missed 2/3 of the season and Jeremie about half. Had Hughes signed Guehi (and sold Joey), it would have been a different story and Virg & Ibou would have been rested. Who could Arne have rotated in?
In midfield, there's a good argument that Arne could have started Curtis more to rest Dom & Ryan while challenging Macca. That one is definitely a mystery. However, as with 5th/6th forwards, it feels like Wata (injured 35%) and Trey aren't at EPL/UCL levels. Who was a legit rotation option?
Life is easier when you convert your best chances. This season has been incredibly hard...
Nunez pulled everyone everywhere. and salah was free to wreak his 32 yr old harmony
Great stuff Andrew.
The conversion rate bar chart ... we are 30-45% off the rate produced during the 3 seasons we earned 90+ points ... ugh!
Not only is Mo's shooting performance poor but we know his xG is also down from last season ... if Alex were fit & on form, it probably wouldn't matter as much as it does
I want us to sign Minteh to succeed Mo at RF but, from the looks of the outcome of big chances table, we desperately need Alex to get back to his 2023-24 & 2024-25 form
You’re my boy. So I’m not choosing violence. But as someone who has to deal with analysis all day and shout at the sky, ‘causation is essential to explaining things’, I will dip in here.
The non-negotiable starting point here is that this season hasn’t been built on a normal base. If you don’t anchor the analysis there, you end up describing patterns really well but not fully explaining why those patterns exist.
The pattern you’ve highlighted is strong. The split between “created” big chances and opportunistic ones is genuinely useful, and the Salah/Gakpo angles are good spots.
But when you break it down, none of this is especially odd. It’s quite predictable. Structured big chances — the ones created through combinations — are the most sensitive to sharpness. They rely on timing, spacing, coordination, body shape, repetition. If you’re even slightly off, those margins go quickly. The pass is a touch off, the run is mistimed, the finish isn’t set. What should be a clean big chance either degrades or never fully materialises.
By contrast, the chaotic ones don’t need that. Errors, rebounds, loose balls — they’re instinctive. They bypass the system. So if your system is even slightly dulled, those chances become relatively easier to convert. That split you’ve identified is a great diagnosis.
But causation is key. The piece leans into new signings, low blocks, final third recoveries not turning into shots. But they sit one level below the real question. Why is the system not sharp enough to consistently generate and convert high-quality chances?
And here it is.
The drop in big chance volume confirms the system isn’t producing enough clean final actions. The underperformance on created big chances confirms the execution layer is off. The reliance on opportunistic chances confirms instinct is outperforming structure. And the final-third recovery point is probably the biggest clue. If those aren’t turning into shots, the first two actions after the regain aren’t sharp enough. That’s function, not randomness.
The oscillation reinforces it. This team can look fine one game — chances coming, goals scored — look blunt or outright abject the next. That’s not how a purely tactical problem behaves. Tactical issues are usually consistent. This is variance driven by execution levels. When the sharpness is there, the structure holds. When it drops, everything collapses.
And you’ve effectively got a £125m reference point in Alexander Isak sitting in the physio room having played eight games all season. That’s your primary box presence, your best natural finisher, and your most reliable converter of structured chances.
So you’ve got creators operating in a slightly dulled system, finishers who aren’t elite box operators being asked to convert high-value chances, and a lack of consistent reference points in the penalty area. That combination is always going to drag down both volume and conversion of big chances.
RE Salah: the underperformance is real and material. Finishing at that level is tied to rhythm and repeatability. When the system is slightly off, the chances arrive less cleanly, the setups are worse, and the margins tighten. That’s when inefficiency shows up more aggressively.
RE: Gakpo, at some point “zero assists” stops being bad luck and becomes a sign that the final layer of execution isn’t quite landing across the team.
So, it’s not that Liverpool have a strange statistical hole around big chances. It’s that they still have enough attacking structure to generate situations, but not enough consistent sharpness — or the right profiles available — to repeatedly turn those situations into high-quality chances and goals.
The numbers look odd. The mechanism behind them isn’t.
The mechanism is the causation. The number is just output.
Just on the difference between this year and last year being a Slot deficiency, the lack of an adequate LW to even partially replace the Diaz output is one of the difficulties we have had this season, leaving the Diogo situation aside.
That's a Hughes decision, tbf. I'm still scratching my head at spending so much on Isak after buying Ekitike for the exact same position (leaving as side possibilities of Ekitike on the left?).
I'm agnostic on Slot atm, it's outside my control, but I do have some sympathy fot him having an inferior rotation option both there and as CF due to Isaks injury and lack of fitness.
Having a LW score a few and presenting a threat would also take much focus off Salah which would be a positive and less pressure on him wouldn't hurt his options and finishing of the team overall.
The non-negotiable starting point is that this isn’t a clean coaching environment. The system is operating without key profiles and consistent availability in critical roles — that’s a recruitment issue. On top of that, the entire pre-season base that builds tactical, physical and psychological cohesion was disrupted by external events outside anyone’s control. If you don’t anchor it there, you end up misattributing structural problems to the coach.
You’re right on the LW point. When that role isn’t a proper profile, the attack tilts. That side stops being a threat, so everything shifts toward Salah. Tighter angles, more bodies, worse decision windows. His finishing then looks like the issue, when it’s actually the load being funnelled onto him.
Where it stops short is treating that in isolation. Because centrally, the system has been built around a striker profile like Isak — and he hasn’t been there. That’s your reference point gone. No consistent box presence, no reliable end-point to moves, less gravity on centre-backs. The plan was clearly to move toward a more striker-centric model — the striker as the primary finisher — which is where the game is trending again. But without that profile available, the structure loses its anchor.
Layer it together and the picture is clear. Weak left-side threat, no central reference for progression and control, and one elite outlet carrying attacking output now in natural decline. That’s not a tactical flaw — it’s an imbalanced profile structure operating without a proper base.
This is where recruitment bites. Not in volume, but in distribution. There’s duplication at CF with Ekitike and Isak, but no real LW redundancy. So when one piece drops out, there’s no way to rebalance. The knock-on effects show up in spacing, timing and chance quality — all of which are already degraded by the disrupted pre-season.
That’s why the outputs look the way they do. Movements are less synchronised, spacing is easier to defend, actions become forced. Big chances drop, and conversion drops with them. It’s not just finishing — it’s the quality of the situations being created.
Slot isn’t blameless — the fallback hasn’t been robust enough. But this isn’t a coach imposing the wrong idea. It’s a system missing key profiles, lacking a proper physical and tactical base, and trying to function anyway.
Fix the wide profiles — left and right — and have Isak available, and the same structure looks very different. Until then, this isn’t a clean test of the coach. It’s a compromised system producing compromised outputs. And that’s before you even layer in the midfield, which is ultimately the control module that determines how well everything else functions.
Hi SK, trying to follow your line of thinking ... are you arguing that "flaws in the system" (i.e. tactics) are the cause of underperformance and not "player-related factors" (form, consistency, quality, availability & adjustment to the league)?
No — it’s not “tactics vs players,” and that is the issue.
We can’t separate tactics from players, and we can’t ignore the pre-season baseline that underpins both. That’s where physical capacity and tactical automation get built. If that’s disrupted, players don’t just lose fitness — players lose repeatability and timing. Actions start right but don’t get completed. Presses are late, spacing stretches, sharpness drops. It then presents as a system flaw, when it’s actually execution decay.
So what we’re seeing is a system being executed by players dealing with availability gaps, slight physical decline, and a compromised base from the outset.
That’s why the outputs look off — especially low-margin actions like finishing. It’s not a flawed idea in isolation, and it’s not purely player form either. It’s a system that currently can’t be performed at the required level, so everything downstream looks worse than it actually is. And there’s no change in system that will mask that issue.
The cleaner way to frame it is this: the underperformance is systemic, driven by a disrupted base, with both “tactical” and “player” issues as symptoms — not separate causes.
Sorry, re-edited this so it reads easy.
Reading your response to Noel's comment & mine and I think I'm following now ... thanks for your patience & let me know if I've got the gist below.
Agree with your point that "the plan" was to build the attack around Alex in the center supported by Florian, assuming they would produce at elite levels. The "plan" also assumed that Mo would continue to be a threat and that Cody could reproduce what he did last season. None of those assumptions have held up and there is no "quick fix" when things go that far off plan.
Not signing Guehi + injuries at the back = further instability (playing Dom out of position, fatigue from playing Virg/Ibou/Ryan/Dom constantly, limited ability to rotate Macca & Ibou when form dipped) = a knock-on effect on poor creation & finishing + game-state challenges when fatigue means mistakes at the back.
Added to that ... I also agree that disruptions to pre-season ARE another cause of the poor outcomes. That's probably always true but, when 75% of the team loses a close friend and we have a massive squad turnover, it's especially impactful. (3 starters + 3 important reserves leave with 6 new players arriving).
Very little of these issues is down to Arne. I find it hard to believe that he pushed to sell Lucho or thought it wise to save a few quid and not push thru the Guehi transfer in July. He has done a solid job of changing the plan on the fly in response these unexpected issues, most of which were not of his own making. It's frustrating when "fan banter" doesn't assign any weight to these factors especially given the whole YNWA appeal of our club.
"when 75% of the team loses a close friend"
I keep thinking about how it must have been for the new players too, the atmosphere they had to come into. It must've been awful for them (in a different way to those that knew Diogo, obviously).
Correct. That is the gist of it.
The attack being built around Isak with Wirtz connecting and Salah/Gakpo maintaining output wasn’t just an idea, it was a set of dependencies. Remove the central reference, destabilise the left, and add even a small drop-off on Salah, and the whole thing loses its anchor.
Same with the defensive side. That feeds everything else. Lack of rotation → fatigue → slower actions → worse spacing → less control → more transitions → more pressure on the attack to be perfect. It’s one loop.
On pre season, you’ve got emotional shock, reduced physical loading, new players coming in, and less time to build automatisms. That hits physical capacity, tactical cohesion and sharpness all at once. From there, everything becomes less repeatable — and when actions aren’t repeatable, performance oscillates.
That’s why there’s no quick fix. You’re not tweaking a system, you’re trying to stabilise something that never properly settled.
Slot is not blameless, but most of what he’s dealing with sits upstream. Recruitment gaps, availability, and a compromised base. So what you’re seeing is adaptation under constraint, not implementation failure.
The system never had the stable conditions required to function properly in the first place. So people saying it failed is like Neo thinking he’s bending the spoon. There is no spoon.
I couldn’t care less what the angry fans are shouting. Old man. Clouds. They’ll find something to shout at.
I broadly agree with your points.
The one issue i would have is Slot's influence on the team. There's no perfect environment for any manager, much of what they decide to do is basically taking a punt on a way to solve an issue. The top tier managers make decisions that seem to work most of the time, this success rate falls as the ability of the managers decreases.
We don't have a large squad so every player needs to be used well and players brought into the team to paper over cracks in abilities lost from injury/suspension/form.
I think Klopp did this well after losing all CBs and the rapid decline in midfielders in two different seasons. It can be argued that the reserves now are poorer than then but there was a structure in place already that was tweaked to minimise the losses in both areas in those years. It wasn't beautiful but it worked.
I find it difficult to say that Slot has done enough in bringing in players to rest/rotate/develop those coming in, as least until failure to qualify for CL became an issue. I don't want to write a hagiography of Klopp but I think it's becoming more apparent every day that Slot doesn't possess the abilities we need right now. I hate criticising our manager (bar Hodgson) but I do think it's a question that needs asking and sooner rather than later.
Our buying of players from systems of 3-5-2 styles and Alonso being available would indicate there's a shift in higher levels confidence in Slot going forward?
Coaches do live in a world of imperfect information and imperfect options. A lot of coaching is exactly that — solving problems with incomplete tools and making the right compromises. It’s also fair to say Slot hasn’t solved enough of the problems robustly. The fallback systems haven’t been strong enough, and with limited squad options, that’s been exposed. However, the Klopp comparison falls short on three marks.
First, Klopp is a superior coach. That’s not controversial. But more importantly, he’s a mature one. Slot is early in his growth curve. Seven years as a head coach is not long. The scar tissue from repeated setbacks — which informs better decision-making — isn’t fully there yet. So asking him to handle a scenario equivalent to “first real setback = maximum severity” is a completely different test. Most coaches fail that climb. The comparison isn’t clean.
Second, Klopp had structure. Even in 20/21, when the centre-backs dropped, the rest of the team was in Year 3 of a fully embedded system. Physical levels were set, roles were clear, automatisms were ingrained. So when Williams and Phillips came in, the rest of the team compensated naturally. That’s what a mature system gives you — elasticity under stress.
Third, Klopp didn’t solve it immediately either. Form dipped when Virgil went, dipped further when Gomez went, and collapsed when Matip went. His first solution — breaking the midfield — made things worse. He only stabilised things later, once he committed to Phillips and Williams. By then, it was already a fight for fourth. The point is simple: even elite coaches mismanage the first phase of a crisis. The differentiator is how they recover.
None of those conditions apply cleanly to this season.
This squad lacks athletic security, role clarity and structural continuity. It’s a team between identities, missing key profiles, without an embedded system. That was already the backdrop. Then the pre-season base — the one moment to build physical capacity, tactical cohesion and repeatable patterns — was disrupted. Once that base goes, everything built on top of it becomes fragile.
Papering over cracks only works when the structure is stable. This one isn’t.
That’s why rotation hasn’t worked cleanly either. Rotation isn’t just using more players — it’s preserving function. If the players coming in can’t maintain timing, spacing and intensity, you’re not rotating within a system. You’re changing it. And when the system is already unstable, those changes compound the problem. That’s why you’ve seen constant adaptation without resolution.
On recruitment, this is about profiles, not systems. Buying players who have played in a back three doesn’t signal a loss of faith in the coach. Most of these decisions predate the disruption anyway. The intent is to build a squad with adaptable, system-agnostic profiles. The issue isn’t direction — it’s distribution. There’s duplication in some areas, gaps in others, and no redundancy in key roles.
So the conclusion is straightforward.
Slot’s in-season problem solving hasn’t been good enough at times. That’s fair. But he’s operating in a low-probability, high-severity environment — one that’s unlikely to repeat. This isn’t a normal stress test. It’s an extreme one, early in his cycle.
It’s also not valid to isolate the coach as the central problem. The conditions aren’t stable enough for that conclusion. Recruitment imbalance, disrupted preparation, injuries and natural player decline all sit upstream of his decisions. The honest test of a coach is how they perform in a stable environment. We haven’t seen that yet.
Arne has made some mistakes this season. I get your point that our performance was worse bc of fatigue and how rotation could have helped. Where I struggle is...the squad Hughes handed Arne wasn't of EPL/UCL quality so, with the stakes very high, who were his options for rotation?
At forward, the issue wasn't with rotation. It was the fitness & form of Mo & Alex (2 of our 3 top wage earners). We expected those 2 to produce 35-40 goals in the EPL (not 7). Arne leaned on Cody, Hugo & Flo out of necessity. Could he have started Fede or Rio? Yes, but they weren't going to replace the production of your 2 best goal-scorers.
Same with defense. With Gio's season over in September, Joey was the only cover at CB and he wasn't fit. At RB, Conor missed 2/3 of the season and Jeremie about half. Had Hughes signed Guehi (and sold Joey), it would have been a different story and Virg & Ibou would have been rested. Who could Arne have rotated in?
In midfield, there's a good argument that Arne could have started Curtis more to rest Dom & Ryan while challenging Macca. That one is definitely a mystery. However, as with 5th/6th forwards, it feels like Wata (injured 35%) and Trey aren't at EPL/UCL levels. Who was a legit rotation option?
A lot of great comments, folks - nice one.