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B
Hey, it's Adam Grant from ted's podcast Work Life, and this episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into. That's why it's no surprise that more than 85% of the Fortune 500 companies use the ServiceNow AI platform, while other platforms duct tape tools together. ServiceNow seamlessly unifies people, data workflows and AI connecting every corner of your business. And with AI agents working together autonomously, anyone in any department can focus on the work that matters Most. Learn how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people@servicenow.com. The Athletic FC welcome to the Athletic FC podcast with me, Ayo Akimwaleere. It's now six defeats in their last seven Premier League games for Liverpool and they currently seek 12th in the Premier League. And with Adamfield getting restless, is Arnold Slott's job at risk? All right, in with us today we've got in the studio John McKenzie. We've also got Ole Kay as well.
- [02:10]
C
Hutchinson for Forest might have a shooting opportunity. Good save From Alisson Gibbs White 3.
- [02:18]
D
Nil Nottingham Forest Morgan Gibbs White piles.
- [02:22]
C
More misery on Arna Slot and the.
- [02:25]
B
Championship Liverpool Neil Nottingham Forest 3. The first time the Reds have lost back to back league matches by a margin of three or more goals since April 1965. Oli look that was under Bill Shankly. The supporters streamed out of Anfield when that third goal went in. Was this a sign that perhaps the tides are turning against Arnold Slot?
- [02:46]
E
I think the reaction was interesting, but I Also think, I mean three nil with you know, whatever it was, 15 minutes left. I think that is a, a fairly standard reaction up and down the country these days. I think a lot of people make a rush for the exits. It looked and sounded pretty negative in terms of the atmosphere. But I don't think I've said this about Manchester United in, in recent weeks at Liverpool, at Manchester United, which should be the two clubs with the most sort of biggest expectation people would say most entitlement. The fans don't generally turn, turn on the manager. They don't boo the manager. You don't get the kind of, you don't know what you're doing or jeering of a manager or anything like that at Liverpool, at Manchester United. The nearest Liverpool have had is that with, that has been with Roy Hodgson in that ill fated brief spell when again they didn't turn on him. There was just a few chants of Hodgson for England at the end of the end of one match. And look, it's a mile, it's miles away from that with, with slot. It really is. There's, you know, you go back to the Aston Villa and Real Madrid games a couple of weeks ago where they won and, and his name was being shouted at huge volume. But what I've noticed is on social media at least there is an awful lot of people wanting to just pin everything on slot, blame slot for everything changes the manager, you know, and I don't think that's ever a barometer of anything. But it does feel like there's, as Jamie Carragher said last, last night on, on Sky Sports, doesn't feel like there's the same sort of enormous bank of goodwill and unconditional loyalty that Jurgen Klopp had. Maybe that's a sort of cult of personality thing. Maybe, maybe, maybe the affection for slot hasn't had chance to sort of deepen to the extent it did for, for, for, for Klopp over, over the course of that journey. But yeah, it feels like there's a lot of negativity, put it that way. But I, I think, I think miles away from seeing the kind of scenes where a crowd turns on a manager. That's, that's not what's happening here.
- [04:53]
C
Yeah.
- [04:53]
B
John, let's take it away from the emotion because you've spoken about slot system and how we'd see the upsides in the first season but it's the second season that perhaps things might potentially start getting tricky. Is that what we're seeing now?
- [05:07]
D
Yeah. It's funny, I'd Forgotten about this take, but I made, I made it. I got positive comments on Liverpool Reddit of all places. No way. They trolled up this take that I had back in the preseason podcast back in last season, before the season had even started. It's very flattering, but in many respects, you know, it's, it was overstated. My, my, my predictions in that, in that podcast. Because what I said was with slot, what you have is a sort of form of Roberto de Zerbi football, right? So the idea is we're so used to elite clubs wanting to possess the ball high up the pitch and try and, you know, create low blocks, break them down. You, you've seen it with Arsenal a lot this season, but with, with this new brand of manager following on from Derby, what they do is they, they want to possess the ball in deeper areas of the field to generate really nice conditions to just, to attack, to create space rather than compressing space to attack. And then what you do is you work the ball around the back and then you have these moments of these triggers when you just, you shift the tempo, you get really quick, you, you go direct. And we saw that last season, right, with Mohamed Salah. Absolutely feasted last season in those conditions where Liverpool could possess the ball at the back, work it around until the right moment and, and then find him and, and, and he had that. One of the best, I think, individual seasons we've seen in the Premier League, which followed what I expected to happen. But what we've seen this season, and the reason why I was maybe a little bit more critical about the second season, is I think when you play in those ways, the way that opponents will eventually respond is by saying, well, fine, we're not going to allow you that space to attack into. We'll sit a little bit deeper, we'll close off the space, and then you'll have to focus on breaking us down, right, which is again, like, obviously everyone wants to attack in space, but if you're so good at doing it, if the opponent refuses that space, then it becomes much more difficult. So I sort of anticipated this happening, but I think what's actually happened is, and what's maybe surprised me a little bit more is not really that Liverpool have struggled to break down low blocks, which they have, I think, but they've also struggled with playing against much more transitional play as well. Because when you sit deeper, you win the ball back and then you're attacking into space. Those have been the situations that Liverpool have struggled in a lot this season with Arnold Slotts Talked about this in a lot of his post match press conferences. But teams going direct against them, I think the highest number of direct balls by a long margin in the Premier League apart from Bournemouth. And that's what they've struggled with the defensive aspects of that, this more sort of transitional game, the other direction. And as a result they've not been able to hold on to clean sheets for as long and they've conceded earlier. Generally speaking, I think some, particularly in the recent games, a few. I think I've got the data in front of me here where in the last few games so palace nine minutes, first goal conceded. Chelsea 14 minutes. Man United two minutes. Brentford five minutes. City 29 minutes. So they're conceding the first goal. They're also conceding it much earlier and that that is changing the game state. And I think it was almost the opposite way around last season where they were able to get the first goal themselves and then use that to open up opponents and have more and more space to attack. What we see now is opponents refusing to play to their terms and as a result being able to hit them in transition, score the goal and then control the game out from there. So it's been a very different tactical sort of landscape for slot this season and it's one that they've not really navigated that well.
- [08:17]
B
Okay, well, Oli, I want to talk about some of the personnel and I think we should start with Alexander Isak, a player I know you've written about. And if you look at that, that match against Nottingham Forest, some of the stats are actually quite damning. You know, you look at a play played 68 minutes, touches 14, expected goals 0.19 shots, just one. Shots on target zero. I mean for a guy they paid a lot of money for every week, just feels like it's compounding the fact that perhaps this wasn't the best deal or the right player for Liverpool.
- [08:53]
E
I think it's really interesting, it's fascinating what's happening with Esac and what's happening with Liverpool because I feel like it's not. It's not your sort of standard situation where a player joins a club for big money and it just looks wrong. I think why it's looking wrong is the fact that he arrived transfer deadline day having basically missed pre season in order to force the transfer. That was his decision. That was something he and his camp felt they needed to do to get the move they wanted. He had a lot of criticism at the time. It hurt Newcastle at the time. First few weeks of the season, certainly. But it's hurt him and it's hurt Liverpool and it's hurt Sweden. Because what has arrived is a player that just doesn't look fit. Arn Slot has tried to sort of play him into form by picking him in the starting lineup. Not, you know, sometimes for 45 minutes, sometimes for 70 minutes, sometimes for 80 minutes. But generally he's tried to pick him and, and start him and he's got injured. He's picked up two injuries and the four matches he started in the Premier League, they've lost. And he's not really contributed in a big way to those games. Apart from the sort of touch against Chelsea for Gakbo's goal, which some people think was lucky, some people think was genius. He's a brilliant player, brilliantly talented player. John might have a different view on this, but I could see the logic behind feeling that he would be an addition that would enhance what they do going forward, particularly in the sort of long term with a post Salah landscape and a team that might be built more around Wirtz and other players rather than a forward line built around Mo Salah. But what I think we're seeing at the moment is just a player who isn't fit. I think in the short term you would have to say Slot would be better advised to go with Ekitike and stop trying to prioritize playing Esek into form when you've probably also got other players, Mac, Allister, Konate, etc who are also trying to be played into form. It's a really muddled picture. Yeah.
- [10:57]
B
You know, I wonder how hard it is to drop a player you've played so much money for. John in many respects. But also, you know, Oli makes an interesting point in terms of the team not working and I'm just trying to compare him to his Swedish compatriot Giorgares, who had a very similar start. Didn't really get a pre season, but still four Premier League goals so far, couple in the Champions League in a way that Isaac sort of hasn't hit the ground running. Is it the team around him that we need to look at? Not the quality of the player necessarily.
- [11:26]
D
I'm not going to get drawn into talking about Arsenal here. I see what you're doing.
- [11:29]
B
Really new inland.
- [11:30]
D
Really new in context is everything in my. In my job context is everything. It's very easy to think about tactics as being this sort of like overarching theoretical thing that just exists out there and the coach either has it right or doesn't and if your ideas are correct, then you'll be fine. Football is just absolutely not like that. The tactical aspect is one small aspect of a much broader, I guess, microcosm or just almost like a micro environment where everything has to be, has to be right. And the difference between Yokerez and the difference between Isaac is that they're going into very different teams at very different moments with very different momentum. I think that's the, that's, that's the thing. I like to talk about cascade effects when, when I talk about what's happening in, in football clubs, because. So I'll give you an example of a cascade. This is a fun story. So the end of the 1800s, sea otter living all along the, the, the west coast of, of the US and these sea otters, they live off sea urchin. So they eat the sea urchin and that's fine. But what starts happening is they start getting hunted for their pelts, right? The sea otter die off. That means the sea urchin are more proliferate because they're not predator. The main source of food for the sea urchin is kelp, the seaweed. So because there's more sea urchin, there's less kelp because they're eating more. And kelp is fundamental to the marine environment around that part of the coast. And with the kelp all dying off, there's less places for these emergent communities of sea life to exist. In one little change, killing off the sea otters has a massive effect across the rest of the board. For the marine life on the west coast of the US the same thing happens in football. As soon as one thing goes wrong, everything can fall apart and suddenly you'll feel as though you're doing the same things that you were doing before, but the conditions have changed and that means that. And again, is Isaac not a good striker? No, of course that's not the case. Is Viet suddenly bad at football? No, what's changed here is that they've been put into an environment where the conditions have changed and there's been all of these effects where, yeah, sure, the tactics may be similar, but, you know, the squad's changed, the momentum has changed. We talk about the tragedy that Liverpool went through in the summer. That has an impact. These players are human beings. They're like you and me. They wake up in the morning and sometimes they have a bad day. When something as tragic as what happened with Diogo Jota happens, that has impacts as ripple effects and it changes the way that people behave. It impacts performances. So essentially, what we're talking about here is very high performance, individuals coming into an environment where things are a little bit off and those cascade effects then start happening.
- [13:57]
B
Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, you aren't listening to David Attenborough. You're actually listening to John McKenzie from the Athletic. Yeah, good. Good point there, mate. Honestly. And I just want to touch on another one, Ollie, in terms of Virgil van Dijk, you know, he told his teammates we're letting the manager and ourselves down after Saturday's defeat. You know, it's a noticeable change from the Liverpool captain who I guess by his standards as well, probably hasn't had the best season himself.
- [14:22]
E
Yeah, well, if you look at what happened with the dodo in Mauritius. No, no, no, no, no. Van Dijk is far from a dodo. It is interesting because look, with van Dijk, I feel like if you looked at the first few weeks this season when Liverpool were kind of not scraping their way through games, but they were kind of winning them by very, very small margins, often very late on. Canate alongside him had started the season poorly. Kirk has started the season very exuberantly, but poorly. There was sort of a turnover at right back. Whether it's Bradley, Frimpong, Szoboszlai, and I thought van Dijk was having an outstanding season, sort of pulling a sort of makeshift defense together. Even going into that sort of Brentford game where he got some criticism at the end of October, he was still winning an enormous number of headers. People talk about Liverpool's vulnerability in the air. He was winning an enormous number of headers, blocking various things, having a, you know, he was sort of holding a defense together. And I think as John was talking about, it spreads. The sort of uncertainty spreads. It's not necessarily him feeling uncertain in himself, but probably doubting everything that's around him. I don't even feel like he's having as good a season as he did before. But I don't think he is the. I don't think his form has been a massive problem. When you've got nobody in form, there isn't really a right team to pick. We've had it with Manchester United over the last last few years. If only the manager did this, have only managed to do that. And it's just not that easy because the problem is a. Is a bigger sort of macro problem rather than all these micro issues that have probably in some way caused it in the first place. It has become a macro problem. A big sort of malaise over the team. And it's a question of how you solve that rather than solve sort of micro tactical issues. I think it's, I think it's big. I've got away from Van Dyke there, but it was, yeah, it was all the talk of sea otters and, and kelp and things like that made me feel, you know, you need to give.
- [16:35]
B
A sermon on that one as well. Is that what it is?
- [16:37]
E
Yeah. All right, I hear you.
- [16:40]
B
Well, let's move on then, because next we'll get into whether Slot's job is actually at risk.
- [16:48]
C
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- [19:18]
B
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- [19:39]
D
I want to emphasize one more time on the fact that I'm responsible for the current, current losses.
- [19:44]
E
You are responsible when you're winning, but.
- [19:46]
D
You'Re also responsible when you are losing.
- [19:48]
E
I can never come up with enough excuses for us to have the results we have. That is far from good enough and I'm responsible for that.
- [19:54]
B
Yeah, that was Arnold Slot speaking in his post match press conference on Saturday. I'm interested in what's going on upstairs for Slot. Oli. What are the bigwigs saying at Liverpool in terms of his situation? Are there any murmurings of perhaps, I don't know, they're not happy with him.
- [20:13]
E
The murmurings I've heard from within the club have been very, very positive in terms of being solid in support of Slot and sympathetic to the difficulties he's facing. Whether it's sort of integrating players or players who have had sort of stop start in terms of injuries or arriving in an unfit condition in the case of V. Sec. Yeah, the message that has been relayed to me is sort of no panic. We're confident, we're confident in the changes we made in the summer and we're confident in a manager who delivered the league title six months ago.
- [20:50]
B
Okay, John, then let's go back to the team. Then Oli talks about, you know, how, and you spoke about it how there are other factors here but then you've got to look at the conversation around even their striking opportunity here. Ekatike a striker in form, Slot picks the guy that's not in form. Could he be doing more with the players at his disposal with the system that he's got?
- [21:13]
D
I think it's worth asking the question of how the squad build this summer impacted the tactical approach. I think again, you know, we talked about tactics before as the sort of overarching, sort of the ideas and strategies that you're going to use to try and get results. But your tactics and strategies are only as good as the players that you have, certainly from profile point of view as well. Right. So I think part of the issue that we're seeing this season is that the system that works so well last season we talked about it already. It's about possessing the ball deep in across your back line and then having those moments of, of trigger and shifts of tempo where you, you start going direct. You can do that when you have in your back line three really good progressive passes in Andy Robertson, Virgil Van Djk and, and Trent Alexander Arnold. Those players can help find the, the players in front of them when, when the space opens out for you to attack. This season they've had Kirkez Frimpong, Bradley obviously van Dijk still there, but those guys are ball carriers and it's a very different kind of profile of player to try and enact those strategies. So I think a big part of what's happened this season is that the players that Liverpool have brought in haven't really suited the strategy that Salt was playing last season. I mean, that raises lots of questions, right? Raises questions about a recruitment department that's been the best in the world for a decade. It raises questions about the relationship between the recruitment department and the coach in terms of recognizing the kind of profiles that they might want. But I think that for me that's, I think it's a valid, valid question to ask because it almost feels as though when Slot was presented with a squad that he didn't have a huge amount of say in last season, I mean they, they barely brought anyone in. They brought in Chiesa and Mama Dashviliu, then promptly went back out on loan. When he was faced with a squad that it wasn't of his building, the football looked much better and as soon as they started building a squad for him, everything fell apart. So there's definitely questions to be asked there as well. So I don't think it's quite so simple as being able to be like, well, you know, he hasn't been provided with the players because it's like the meme of the guy in the hot dog suit.
- [23:07]
E
Right.
- [23:07]
D
We're still trying to find the guy who did this. He's been involved in those decisions. Whether or not he should be held responsible for the way that this squad is played. The manager's responsibility is to get the most out of the squad that's presented to them. But they're also involved in the, in the building of that squad. So yeah, I think these, these are the, these are the interesting questions. Is it, is the solution now only going to be solvable in the, in the market? They're going to have to bring in those players that they've needed for a while, you know, more progressive options from the back line, maybe a bit more of a defensive presence in, in, in the, in the sort of defensive midfield slot, etc. What's happened now that, I mean, has Salah been marginalized? Is, is there just a drop off? He's, he is getting towards the end of his career. All of these questions I think need to be answered. But I think what I would expect from any really good coach worth their soul is the ability to take those problems and find solutions. And the classic example of that, I say classic it was last season. Pep Guardiola was faced with a squad that couldn't do what he wanted to do. The landscape of the Premier League had changed, become so much more physical. His players weren't able to play the, his tactics weren't able to function the way that he wanted them to. And actually I say this a lot and it annoys a lot of people, but I think what was incredible about Man City last season is they had that awful November. Everything went similar to what we've seen with Liverpool. Yeah, sure, he dragged those players back and he did that. Not, not just because he, he, he sort of almost threw his tactics in the bin and said, right, we're just going to have to make this squad work somehow. They did bring in players in January, but they still used the, the old guys who were, who were getting a little bit physically past it made that work and he brought the players with him. For me, that's what I'm most interested in seeing whether or not Slot can do that. Can he throw his tactics in the bin and say, fine, we've got to make something work here. Can he drag the players with them?
- [24:47]
B
Yeah. A lot of people are now saying Slot won the league with Klopp's team. Is that fair?
- [24:52]
E
Well, he did win the league with Klopp's team, but Klopp, who is a brilliant manager, didn't win the league with that team this previous season, they finished third. And I would say what happened in the final months of that season and also what Slot did subsequently demonstrates that Klopp was sort of running out of energy and running out of ideas and inspiration. I felt. Look at Liverpool that 23, 24 season. They had moments where everything clicked and it looked fantastic. But for a lot of the season they didn't look like a very well coached team. They looked like a really well managed team who were kind of all pumped up and still running through brick walls for the manager. And maybe a lot of it was sort of muscle memory in terms of what he'd done with them previously. It felt like, yeah, it was a team that was. That would certainly need improving if they were to win the Premier League title. And I think when Slot took over and they only added an unfit Chiesa in that first transfer window, nobody was saying they were going to win the league with Klopp's team. And I think what we saw through most of the last season was a team that was tactically, structurally and also in terms of just focus and game management and mentality looked so much better than Klopp's team the. The season before. So I would praise Slot to the heavens for what he did last season. But so far this season he has not been able to find the solutions. Whether it was sort of structural, tactical. In the first few weeks of the season, I think where things needed to be, you know, there'll be the accusation, perhaps from me and perhaps from others as well, that you perhaps try to change it a bit too quickly, try to integrate too many of the new players immediately, has perhaps tried to play people back into form when you're not really able to carry passengers who are, or two or three players who aren't in form. And it's created a situation where this season there's now a crisis. It's a crisis and it calls for sort of crisis management in terms of stopping the rotation, lifting the mood, dragging a team through it. It's, you know, we talk about a lot about coaching, a lot more about coaching than we ever used to in this country, which is great. But I think this is a situation which more than anything calls for really, really strong forthright management. I think it was the same with Guardiola last season. He did things which he probably hadn't been able to or hadn't had to do at early stages in his career. It's firefighting now.
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B
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- [29:04]
C
You're listening to the Athletic FC podcast with IowaKamolere.
- [29:09]
B
Yeah, before we carry on, I need to tell you guys about the Sucker 100. It's a brand new book from the Athletic Ollie, I'm hoping you've got your copy there. Tell the people what they need to know about this book.
- [29:19]
E
It's fantastic. I'm so proud of what we as a team have put together with this book. I think it's excellent. It's titled the Story of the Greatest Players in History. So it's about not necessarily the 100 greatest players, but 100 of the greatest players, which you can probably guess who probably the top three would be. But we're telling stories of if I take a, you know, if I go at random, you've got George Ware, Stanley Matthews, number 100 is Uwe Saylor, the great German player of the 60s. And Seb Staffer Bloor has written a wonderful piece about him. I wrote about for example Kenny Dalglish. Seems we're talking about Lift Bull on his podcast. I interviewed Kelly Dalglish for it and was he was talking about the type of player he was and talk about sort of the tricks trade and using shadows and and you know, certain passes he would play for. Ian Rush, I find that absolutely fascinating and there are just some absolutely remarkable stories in there. There's Jack Lang, who's our Brazilian expert, has done a Wonderful profile of Garincha the great Brazilian. Oh, nice. Winger of the 50s and 60s. Matti Sindelar, great Austrian player of the. Of the 30s who's probably a name people wouldn't recognize. Mark Critchley has done a piece about the sort of mysterious circumstances of his death in Vienna at the start of the war. It's a fascinating book. It is definitely worth putting on your Christmas list. So I was gonna say stocking filler, but it's a bit too big.
- [30:55]
B
It's a big one. It's a big one.
- [30:57]
E
760 pages, I think. And there is. I'm dipping in and out of it and I'm absolutely loving it.
- [31:02]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's what we do best here at the Athletic. All our journalists together talking about football, talking about players as well. So make sure you get your hands that. Soccer 100 from the Athletic. Well, let's. Let's try and get some positives in right now because, ollie, despite being 12th at the Premier League table, Liverpool are just three points off the top four. It's pretty congested up there, actually, if you think about it. I mean, what's the. What's the aim now? Because, you know, a few decent results, they could still be back in it for at least European football next season.
- [31:36]
E
I would agree. I would. I would agree, but I would have. I would have said, you know, there's a nice run of fixtures now, but I. I said that before the weekend. So. Lottingham Forest at home looked like a really. A really nice way of easing into a run of games. It's PSV at home in the Champions League. Then it's West Ham away, Sunderland at home, Leeds away. It's a nice. It's a nice run of games which I felt sort of offered a way out of that crisis. And I thought perhaps watching them on the first half hour on Saturday where. Which I thought was reasonable, decent, things were working, more or less, not quite sharpness, but things seemed to be working. It felt like there was a way out of it. But it's so similar to what happened with Man City last season. It's very easy to fall into that kind of slide, but it's very hard to find your way out of it once that sort of rot sets in. Mixed metaphors there. Need to find something like Sea autosom. But it's. It's. I look at those games and I think, yes, they. They should. They should win a couple of those. Two, three of those. But I don't know. It's. It's. Liverpool have ended up winning Games that looked hard on paper, away to Frankfurt and home to Real Madrid in the Champions League and, and losing what looked like easy games on, on paper. So when this sort of confidence crisis bites, it becomes hard to predict anything with certainty about a team bouncing back.
- [33:02]
B
Any lessons to be learned from how Guardiola turned it around last season for slot? Because yes, there's so many permutations here, right. A slump team, a coach that's looking for new ideas and tactics. But I mean there is a blueprint in various renditions of the Premier League that you can maybe look back to.
- [33:18]
D
Yeah. And I think on top of that the tactical landscape of the Premier League has shifted as well. So I think it's hard to expect coaches to just have these ready made solutions. It's not like, oh, if this approach isn't working then we've got this other plan B that's working for everyone else. I think there's a sense in which every coach in the Premier League is, is coming to terms with the, the, the, the tactical landscape and that's why I think it's so competitive in the Premier League. Right now. Liverpool are in, in the position they're in having lost a ton of games recently, but they're still well within touching distance of the top four. So there's, there's negatives and there's positives there. But yeah, with, I think with Guardiola it was very much a case of, of saying what's our weakness? Well, we're getting caught out in transition all the time so we need to overload. We don't have the physicality necessarily to be able to defend in the way that we're defending. So let's introduce a little bit more transitional play into our team. I think it's a different problem that Slot is facing but again the same issues are there. It's, it's. With these games coming up I think they've got to, they've got to focus on a few like simple things. We've talked already that like they're struggling in games because they're conceding first if, if they can get those goals, you know, the opening goals and games they did. I mean some, the Villa game, a good example of that where they managed to get the first goal there and then went on for the win. And I think that's what they're going to have to do in these games because as Ollie points out, a game against someone like Leeds on paper, you look at it and think, oh, that's a nice settler for a manager in These situations. But as we said, long balls, second ball losses, and then getting caught in that way, that's the way that this Leeds team has been built. And again, if that Leeds team gets the early goal and then is able to sit a bit deeper and take fewer risks, the game state just gets away from you. So I think the focus has to be almost like small picture, like details in games. This is where the weaknesses of these teams are. Try and get the first goal, let's come out and be aggressive here. We, on paper we have the better players. So we should be able to just come out, be really aggressive. Fifteen minutes, try and get that first goal and then if we do, the game state will favor us much more. But I guess the big question then is like in the long run, like where do you, where do you go from there? Because it's not just a case of, of turning this ship around. I think that's what we've seen from Guardiola as the counter example is last season they, you know, City had a weird season. They were top of the league until match day nine. They had a horrible November and then from December, the first one, they put up the most points in the league despite having a game fewer than Arsenal and Liverpool, who obviously had caveats for why maybe they performed a little bit lower in terms of the points. But that's what Guardiola did. He ground out to the end of the season. This season they've had to do something different. They can't just grind. They've got to try and find a new way of playing that will allow them to dominate. So I guess that in the short term it's kind of like, well, how do we win these immediate games and stabilize ourselves long enough that we can then think about the longer term picture and think, think, is this issue here like a, is it, is it more intrinsic, is it a tactical approach issue here? Like we said before, if teams are going to sit deep against us and go long, do we have the players to do that? Are we able to withstand some of the, the issues that that kind of approach faces? So yeah, big questions. But I think the, the focus should right now should be on the small questions in the next few games.
- [36:17]
E
I agree with John, but the, the one difference I would say in terms of Guardiola, Manchester City last season and Liverpool this season is that City had had a very, very quiet summer in the transfer market. They'd not really strengthened a first team squad at all. And the feeling was that they had done too little and that perhaps it was an aging team that was going a bit stale and that they needed fresh legs, fresh energy, fresh ideas. Whereas the feeling with Liverpool is that they've perhaps done too much in the transfer market and they're very different reasons why they needed to do. You could argue, in fact we Liverpool, that they could have done, should have done even more than they did in transfer market. But what the changes that they've made have led to is. Is a sort of team in a state of flux transition while trying to defend a title. And it. And it's meant that he's had to sort of change so much so quickly. And. And it feels like that's what's not working. The. The sort of team looks like it. It's not taken shape yet. Yeah.
- [37:17]
B
Can I ask you a quick question before we go? Is that, you know, Jeremy Carragher, obviously former Liverpool legend, was also saying that perhaps Liverpool need to spend the same kind of money they spent in the summer again to sort of rectify this situation. Is that one step too far? Isn't it just surely about damage limitation right now, finding out, as John said, get back to basics, understand how we want to play this kind of football and just see where we end this season and then we build again next season.
- [37:42]
E
I think the idea of them spending big in January on two or three more players is probably hard for people to understand after the summer they had, but it was their first. Well, they've not really been very active in the transfer market for a long time. There was the summer of 2023 when they brought in Gravenbirch, McAllister and Endo and Szoboszlai. But apart from that sort of over the course of about seven, eight years, really it's been really minimal change. It's been evolution rather than revolution. And I think for that reason there were an awful lot of issues building up at once. Sort of compounded by the departure of Tret Alexander Arnold, which was against the club's wishes. And compounded of course by the loss of Diogo Jota, which is just kind of thing that has just had so many effects. But in terms of the very relatively trivial matter of squad building made things more difficult and more complicated. But they are, despite spending all the money they spent in, in the summer, they are a central defender, light even. Even without. Even before they lost Leone to injury on his debut in the Carabao cup.
- [38:53]
B
But he's only 18. I mean, you wouldn't expect him to lead the line, would you? I mean he's still a young lady.
- [38:58]
E
No Exactly. And that's why they wanted Mark Gahey and they thought they were going to get him on. On transfer deadline day. I think if he had arrived, he would have played a lot of football because. Because Ibrahima Konate just doesn't seem to be at it this season. Whether he would have improved. The sort of aerial question, I don't know. It's. It's an interesting one. But you could question about whether they're a midfielder light in terms of their. Their options that, you know, whether they. Whether they need. You know, remember that the first player that slot wanted was a number six when he arrived and they didn't get Zubimendi. And then Graven Birch sort of reinvented himself brilliantly to brilliant effect last season. But I feel like that that sort of gravenberch McAllister axis, which worked so well last season, just isn't really working as well this season. Whether it's Mac Allister's form or whether it's that opponents have found a way to sort of out muscle in. Outmuscle them in key areas or maybe expose one or other of them physically. And then you look at their wide options. I mean, yes, they bought two center forwards at enormous expense. They bought Florian Wirtz, but they also lost Luis Diaz and to my mind they've not replaced him. They look at least one wide player or at least one forward. Sure, when you look at last season, they always had good attackers to be able to come off the bench. I think this season it doesn't seem to have been the same issue. I mean, they've called off Federico Chiesa who is. Is clearly a good player, but. But who slot seems to doubt physically. Esac has the question marks that we've mentioned in terms of the physical side. Rio Ngomo has made a number of appearances from the bench, most successfully against Newcastle back in August. That seems a long time ago, but it doesn't look like a complete squad. So although they did all of that in the summer, it feels like there is another phase of this rebuild that is necessary. And unlike in the summer, it feels like that's going to have to be approached from a position of weakness and with a degree of desperation. So whether any of that happens in January or whether they put it all off until the summer, I don't know. But I think they absolutely do need another central defender. If Van Dijk was injured, I feel like it could disintegrate further. And he's playing so much football he's not really getting a rest. So they need another central defender short with great certainty. Not just for the medium long term, but absolutely for the short term as well.
- [41:31]
B
Okay, well, yeah, Liverpool next, PSV in the Champions League, West Ham away, Sunderland at home and then Leeds away. All right, let's leave it there. Oli, Appreciate your time. John. Thanks so much for joining us and also thank you guys for listening as well. We'll be back tomorrow.
- [41:50]
C
You've been listening to the Athletic FC Podcast. The producers are Guy Clark, Mike Stabreau and Jay Beale. Executive producers are Abby Patterson and Avi Moorhead. To listen to other great athletic podcasts for free, including our dedicated club shows, search for the Athletic and all the usual places. You'll also find us on YouTube at the Athletic FC Podcast, so make sure you subscribe. The Athletic FC Podcast is an athletic media company production.
- [42:26]
B
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A
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