I think my point is that the responsibility of mitigating this is Slot’s. For one, Bradley is always injured and so is Gomez. Any one of us here could have said counting on those two was a massive risk. Anyone we put at RB was going to be a massive drop off from Trent but Slot’s solution was to put Dom there, which worked as a one off and somehow became the actual plan B. We saw with Klopp wha happens when you shoehorn midfielders into defense. Ramsey may be mediocre but he’s at least a RB. That’s on the manager. Next, Mac got run into the ground last season after we had the league done and dusted and looks like a shadow of the player he was. Because the manager refused to rotate and use his squad. Leoni isn’t his fault. Isak didn’t come in fully fit but we chose to start him into shape instead of bringing him along slowly. I thought and still think it was stupid to buy him, but the purchase isn’t on Slot. How he integrated him is. Konate isn’t his fault per se but does a strong manager get his head right? Salah is badly affected by how we set up tactically. We run our entire attack through the left side, and Salah has nobody to combine with. We don’t play with any sort of pace, we don’t press, we don’t break the lines with through balls or long passes-all of which hurts Salah and while there’s certainly regression from Mo it’s exacerbated by how we set up. Squad construction overall, it’s hard to know how much say he had in shipping Diaz and Nunez out but he certainly didn’t use Nunez and doesn’t use his full squad so some of that is on him. And obviously Diogo isn’t on him. Bottom line, no, you can’t blame him for all of those items but it’s his responsibility to mitigate them and he’s done a very bad job doing so, and some of those things are problems of his own making.
So, we play our usual game. A great bright start with glorious close tries. Then we settled into an 85/15 possession. With the occasional close miss either end. The missed PK and finally the late first half goal. Yep, part of the plan. Second half we play possession again and sometimes get close to scoring. Until the 60th minute when we decide to let Barnsley come and play a passing game in our half. True to form the panic sets in and the team forget that we are the current champions in 4th place and they are dog poop in next to last. And they score, from the left. The game then resolved to time wasting on one team while our staff complains, forgetting the chances we’d missed in the previous 80 minutes. how the hell are we in 4th place.
And an xG of 2.9. Glass half empty - we found a way to lose. Glass half full - we mostly played some good stuff and competed well for the loose balls.
IMO Gakpo’s style is part of the problem, both for Milos and for the new boys. This is not a criticism of his play or his quality. Similar for Mo. I see why Arne wants pacy and more direct wingers. Our midfielders need to take more risks too. I have no idea what happened to our defense and composure. We consistently lose second balls too. Using Trent and VVD to spray passes across the park is now missed. We knew this would be a transition year, but the football lacks more cohesion and confidence than expected.
Why was trhe Ekiteke goal ruled our for offside? Didn't their p[layer platy the balkl first after Van Dyke? Part of the problem yesterday was taking too many utterly pointless shots.I think we win that game handily enough if we don;t take those shots and instead keep probing for actual openings....