24 Nov 2025 06:54:25
Question for the Eds, do any of you know why slots has seen such a massive change in his approach this season? Not necessarily the way he approaches games but the way he doesn’t change anymore.
Last season one of the most obvious things about him was the minor tweaks he made for games such as positional play of szobo in the ten, or the inverting of the full backs. In terms of his in game management, the substitutions and tweaks were very often good but this season we just seem to play the exact same system, and football constantly with the only change ever being to throw more attackers on and end up crowding it.
{Ed001's Note - I can only think that Heitinga had a big hand in a lot of those ideas and van Bronkhorst doesn't offer the same tactical insight.}
24 Nov 2025 08:23:10
In my opinion, Slot got carried away last season believing his own hype. He then came up with a new system and plan, which was used to sell the move to Wirtz (this is important as it indicates that he had one vision for the evolution of the side) . This evolution has not worked and will not work in this footballing climate, and Slot is reeling from that and does not know what else to do as he was totally convinced that it would work.
I appreciate that the Dutch are straight talkers, and that its a cultural thing, but slot has rolled out excuse after excuse, including throwing some players under the bus, and only now finally says 'its on me'. half heartedly .
He is not inspiring anyone with this and is loosing the dressing room, its obvious. The issue is that Hughes and co do not want to admit they are wrong, and thankfully we are not Manure.
The glaringly obvious issue is that it is only now in an adverse situation that parts of Slots nature are on show, and those parts duggest to me at least that he is not wise, mature and stoic enough to guide the club through the challenges.
Great managers are leaders, they command respect, they instil confidence, they pick you up when you are down. Im not seeing any of this from Slot, instead i see a man who has a fantasy / vision/ idea about how the game should be played but little else. Kill them with passes is straight out of the David brent playbook.
For all of these reasons i do not see Arne turning this around, and believe he'll go down as a pub quiz anomoly in years to come. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but its how i see things, and this is a discussion forum.
24 Nov 2025 09:20:55
Isn’t this something that a lot of our managers have done over years?
Roger’s finished second playing a diamond / high press system - converted to a more possession based system, then got sacked (admittedly did lose Suarez so massively downgraded squad ability and lost captain Gerrard, though at the time wasn’t his best) .
Klopp - won league / champions league with high intensity pressing football, then swapped style to more possession based, though had bad season were lost both centre backs.
Now Slot appears to have done similar approach…understand small tweaks but after last season admittedly squad needed a slight overhaul but was backed.
24 Nov 2025 09:22:57
Banana, you've used an offensive word in your piece. It's been spoke about often on this site. You're obviously not aware of it.
24 Nov 2025 09:41:39
Banana, for context to Rome's post, "Manure" is the offensive word. It may seem like a harmless way to refer to ManUtd but it started out as a derogatory chant in reference to the Munich Air Disaster. So please refrain from using that from now on.
24 Nov 2025 10:23:11
Dracred - I thought it meant Man u (re), had no idea it was related to tragedy chanting.
{Ed001's Note - it was a song by West Brom fans about how the Man Utd team were just manure on the runway after the Munich disaster. It spread from there, sadly.}
24 Nov 2025 10:53:35
Same here had no idea about the origins . I always call them Manure because of the word meaning S××TE.