25 May 2026 00:17:20
Today’s game sums this season up. Dominate possession, final third we are rudderless, any ball into the box were second best. Hopeless.
25 May 2026 00:29:53
You're forgetting walked through very easily and concede chances.
25 May 2026 00:33:00
Just a thought - but I wonder if not having a fully fit and firing attack worth $300mil not starting had something to do with that?
25 May 2026 01:04:01
We were rubbish in both thirds.
A new manager, any new manager, will sort it out.
Next November.
If the club hasn't already been destroyed by then.
25 May 2026 01:18:37
Faith, even when they have been fit we've still been rubbish, mate. So what's the excuse there?
Just a thought - I wonder if buying 2 absolute string beans has anything to do with the fact that they've missed a total of 6 months combined.
25 May 2026 01:28:11
#Stringbeansout
A new manager won't buy string beans.
25 May 2026 01:35:02
Isak, Wirtz, and Ekitike have been on the pitch together a combined 122 minutes. They have almost never been fit together.
25 May 2026 01:41:26
Rigsby, not like you to be so "negative." Sign of the times. Welcome back. You had us all worried. ?
25 May 2026 01:59:03
Thanks, Flyer.
I think ?.
25 May 2026 02:12:25
ArnieJ, Isak and Ekitike won't be playing together regularly; that was never the plan. Even when all 3 were available, they weren't being played together, or did you not notice? That whole stat is just another one of Arne's excuses, like the "It's a transition season" nonsense. Last summer we were told the plan was to dominate, now it's a transition? It's called 'damage control', which is PR talk for 'outright lies'.
Nobody spends £450m after winning the league to go into a transition; the average age of the players we sold last summer was 24, our oldest players sold were 28; that's not a transition in any universe.
25 May 2026 02:31:36
ArnieJ, Just for reference, Wirtz, Isak and Ekitike were available together for a total of 15 games, that's 1350 minutes, and yet they only played 122 minutes together. Don't let Slot pull the wool over your eyes, mate. Never pay heed to desperate men.
25 May 2026 03:56:03
@Rigsby, Minor point if order ….. you do know there are three thirds. ?
{Ed078's Note - I wasn't going to mention it.
25 May 2026 04:47:34
I thought Macca & Gakpo were horrible.
25 May 2026 05:06:48
They didn't play together because Isak has never been fit.
In saying that, it is a fair point. It is the reason I made the case that the Isak signing was unnecessary after we had secured Ekitike. I argued that they were competing pieces, not complimentary ones and that it was highly unlikely we would ever see a return of G/As for both players that pays back the roughly $200mil we would pay for them both.
We could and should have put that money elsewhere on the squad.
25 May 2026 06:21:12
Just more excuses, Faith.
We still had Gakpo, Salah, Rio, Wirtz and Cheisa.
25 May 2026 06:37:57
In fairness we lost 3 forwards last summer.
2 of whom were centre forwards and another who was a left wing but had played 50% of his games at centre forward that season.
Even replacing 3 with 2 left us short-handed, which we have seen this season.
Realistically we went big on 3 signings.
1 hasn’t even hardly played.
1 has struggled to be consistent in the league.
And whilst Hugo has had good numbers for goals and assists he doesn’t seem to like the defensive side or pressing of the game that you could align with Diaz, Darwin, Jota and Bobby.
And sadly he is now recovering from what medical SMEs (Google search) declare as one of the worst injuries to bounce back from for a professional footballer.
25 May 2026 07:20:55
ArneJ, (the new defender of Arne Slot), we could have prime Messi, Neymar and Suarez up front for us. We'd still be crap. This isn't about fit players, this is about terrible management.
This injury excuse is a joke now. Are people forgetting we had far worse injuries under Klopp? I mean we won the League Cup with a kids team and I saw more that day than the entirety of this season.
25 May 2026 07:21:51
Isak was never fit because of Slot's training methods. He kept picking up injuries because he was going into games unfit like the others that kept getting injured.
If Klopp was manager, Isak would have been fully fit 2/3 weeks after signing, but 2/3 days off a week totally makes pre season a waste of time.
25 May 2026 07:42:23
Isak, a player known for having groin complaints constantly at Newcastle and how needed his minutes managed, would have been fully fit 2-3 weeks after signing without having had any preseason training? How do you figure that? I remember how you said even Isak's broken leg was Slot's fault because if he was fit enough he would have been able to instantaneously leap over Van de Ven's sliding tackle half a split second after striking the ball, Grino.
25 May 2026 07:51:25
Arniej, you're worse than Slot for excuses, mate. There was never a plan to play Isak, Ekitike and Wirtz together. Isak is injury prone and needs his minutes managed. That's why Ekitike was brought in. Did you never stop to think why they brought in 2 players that were so similar? You do that when you're planning to rotate, not when you're planning to play them together.
Did you ever hear the saying "It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled."
25 May 2026 08:06:42
There may not have been a plan to play them together, but surely there is no harm having them both fit, and it would be infinitely better to have the option to have them both on the field in a game if we wanted to try something different?
Surely we didn't buy both so that one could be injured for long periods at any given time and the other could just fill in.
Whatever the case may be, having two top forwards out for extended periods of time is hardly a good situation to be in. We've seen the last few games just how important a proper 9 is. Gakpo has tried his hardest in the position, but he is woeful when it comes to center forward play and offers no presence in the box.
Also, given that the two of them have similar skillsets, insofar as they can drop deep, link up the play and pull wide, you could say that they could start as a front 2 and alternate being the most advanced player throughout the game. Ekitike worked with Marmoush at Eintracht doing the same. Ekitike could also play withdrawn on the left with a fullback holding the width. They may not have been bought to both be nailed on starters, but that doesn't mean that they can't play together (I remember writing something about exactly how they could very early in the season).
25 May 2026 09:00:16
Pb, what I said was if Isak was fully fit he would have been there faster and away from VV tackle, avoiding injury, but he has never been match sharp all season.
Isak was not injured when he signed, and he might not have had a preseason, but he would have been doing personal training, so it would not have taken that long to get him up to speed with a good coach.
But we have a part time one. You can see it with players in the squad that don't play all the time under Slot. When Klopp was in charge, squad players under Klopp were ready to come in and play. Under Slot, none are fit enough.
26 May 2026 20:06:35
Patrik, I would expect any 2 players on £200k+ per week to be able to play together, but that's besides the point. The intention and the action are what matter here, not the possibility. Arnie was using the fact that they hardly played together as a valid reason for underperforming, when the fact is that 122 min stat is just one of Arne's excuses; there was 1300+ min where all 3 were available, so clearly they weren't played together intentionally.
It was never the plan, so claiming it as an excuse is nonsense. Sure, if both were fully fit all season, of course that would be of benefit, but let's be honest, we're missing a huge amount of creativity and service going forward, something both strikers are quite reliant on. At the end of the day "whether it's possible" to play them together just isn't a factor here; the intention was to rotate, and we saw all the proof of that we need.