It feels almost ridiculous that we’re even having this conversation.
A manager who won the Premier League just a few months ago should not be anywhere near a dismissal debate. Yet Arne Slot is right at the heart of one, and not because fans are impatient or pundits are bored, but because his Liverpool team have collapsed in a way that is becoming impossible to rationalise.
This was supposed to be a transitional season, not a full-on nosedive. A few awkward results while the new signings settled, maybe the odd flat performance, a slow build towards something with immense potential.
Instead, the longer this goes on, the less Liverpool look like a team in transition and more like one in utter disarray. Nothing is bedding in or improving, and every week the gap between what should be happening and what actually is happening grows wider.
The facts make it hard to pretend otherwise.
Liverpool are on their worst run in more than 70 years, have suffered three consecutive defeats by three goals or more, endured a horror show collapse in midweek against PSV Eindhoven, and have made conceding first a ritual. The intensity that defined them under Jürgen Klopp, and was maintained last season under Slot, hasn’t dipped, it’s vanished. And the confusion on the pitch mirrors the confusion off it.
And this after spending hundreds of millions strengthening a squad that had just won the title. Liverpool didn’t stand still, they invested heavily. Yet the more this becomes Slot’s team, the more its identity seems to slip away.
These are his players, his selections, his instructions, and that means he needs to take ownership of the undeniable regression too.
The visit to West Ham United today carries weight it shouldn’t. Win and Slot earns a temporary reprieve. Anything else, and the conversation shifts from change being possible to inevitable
If Liverpool are looking for a sacking precedent, there is one. Claudio Ranieri delivered the most astonishing title win in Premier League history and was sent packing the following season. Success buys time, but only if the present at least vaguely resembles the past. When it doesn’t, football moves on fast.
Which is why the visit to West Ham United today carries weight it shouldn’t. A club like Liverpool shouldn’t be using a November fixture as a managerial referendum, but that’s exactly what it feels like. Win and Slot earns a temporary reprieve. Anything else, and the conversation shifts from change being possible to inevitable.
Replacement rumours are already doing the rounds, but the names I have heard mentioned – like Xabi Alonso, Zinedine Zidane, Julian Nagelsmann, Roberto De Zerbi and Klopp – are either unavailable, unsuitable or plain unrealistic.
Which has led to the bizarre possibility that, if Slot does go, Liverpool could end up with a caretaker manager till the end of the season until one of their preferred options becomes available.
It’s staggering that it has reached this stage, and I don’t think anyone involved in football – no matter what they might be claiming now – saw this coming after last season’s triumph.
Slot hasn’t fallen yet, but he’s teetering on the brink. And this afternoon the Hammers could well push him over the edge.
Coventry are Frankly fantastic
Just over a year ago Frank Lampard took over at relegation-threatened Coventry City with many saying this could be his final chance to prove he has what it takes to be a manager.
Prior to arriving at the CBS Arena his career in the dugout had been mostly average, with occasional bouts of awful.
Now, 12 months later, and I think it’s fair to say he has proved his point, transforming his new team into something rather special.
Coventry were not a complete shambles when he arrived... they were a decent team down on their luck, a side that had been well coached by Mark Robbins but had slipped into a rut and couldn’t climb out of it.
The football had gone flat, results weren’t matching performances, and the whole season felt like it was drifting into that horrible grey zone somewhere between relegation and surviving by the skin of their teeth.
Lampard didn’t have to rebuild the club as such, but he had to wake it up. And he’s done that in style, getting Coventry firing on all cylinders, some of which they didn’t know they had.
His team are playing on the front foot in a manner you rarely see these days, and which is, dare I say it, somewhat reminiscent of the Tottenham Hotspur, West Ham and Portsmouth teams managed by Harry Redknapp... who just happens to be Frank’s uncle.
When Lampard arrived the improvement was instant, with the Sky Blues stringing together a series of wins that took them away from the drop zone towards the top six. And that form was maintained with Coventry securing a play-off spot last season and being unlucky not to make the final.
You could see the structure, the belief, the identity forming – Coventry became a team that would attack, attack, attack until their opponents inevitably wilted under the relentless pressure.
This year that style has grown into something even bigger and better, and they are now 10 points clear at the top and scoring goals like they are going out of fashion – 47 at the time of writing, which is a whopping 19 more than anyone else in the division.
Lampard spent years being told he might never quite make it as a manager. He now has a team transformed, a fanbase believing again, and a promotion charge that feels entirely warranted. They look like a club accelerating towards the Premier League, and Lampard is the one driving it.
Uncle Harry must be proud as punch.
The manager who never plays home
I missed this last week but found it such an interesting story that I felt it worthy of a mention: Haiti have qualified for the World Cup despite their manager never setting foot in the country.
Sebastien Migne took the job 18 months ago but has still never visited the country due to its current perilous, war-torn, rebel-ruled situation. It’s simply too dangerous. No flights go in, no safe entry route exists and no realistic way has emerged for him to be there in person.
So he built a national team the way most people manage a fantasy football squad – remotely, through phone calls, video clips and a lot of trust.
Haiti are currently playing their ‘home’ matches 500 miles away in Curaçao; the players live out of suitcases and train wherever space and circumstance allow. Yet despite their preparations for each game being a million miles away from normal football, they’ve made it to the World Cup.
Migne may not have been able to visit the country he represents, but he’s taken them somewhere extraordinary. And that’s a story worth celebrating.
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