HariKrishnan S

@Doc_A_I What if both jones and mac leaves the we could actually get them both right?

Liverpool’s midfield needs #IntelligentEngines. The question is what kind of metal survives the machine. Ayyoub Bouaddi is raw ore. Alex Scott is the tempered blade. Ore is seductive because it lets you dream. Before the furnace, before the hammer, before the edge is drawn, you can imagine anything. But ore is still only potential. The blade is less romantic, but it has already been through fire. It has taken its shape. It has met resistance. Ore carries possibility. The blade carries consequence. The fight is now. Bouaddi, 18, has the sort of base that makes scouts lean forward: clean feet, surprising duel strength, and real progression upside. He matches Scott closely on total progression (45th vs 44th), edges him on progression via passes (25th vs 21st) and pass accuracy (38th vs 15th), and leads in defensive ground duels (85th vs 70th) and aerial duels (75th vs 68th). There is real metal here. But Scott has the edge. Defensive impact (84th vs 39th), defensive actions (89th vs 82nd), final product (65th vs 40th), and Total VAEP (57th vs 12th) all point the same way. Bouaddi gives you the material. Scott is already cutting. The defensive maps tell the same story. Bouaddi does not hide: 59 tackles, 62 interceptions or blocked passes, 151 recoveries across 25.9 90s, spread through central zones. That is encouraging. Yet Scott is doing the dirtier work in dirtier places: 60 tackles, 67 interceptions, 195 recoveries, 85 clearances, stronger box protection, and 31.8 Premier League 90s of contact. This is where the blade has already taken blows. On the ball, the gap is not in broad volume. Both sit at 1.5 progressive carries per 90; Bouaddi has 2.2 progressive passes per 90, Scott 2.1. Bouaddi is clean, vertical, and secure. Scott, though, gets into more places where the next action hurts. More final-third threat. More end product. More value. That is the difference between metal and weapon. Scott already delivers the full sequence: #RegainCarryCreate. Bouaddi is close on regain and carry, but the create and total value sides still lag. Bouaddi is tomorrow’s metal. Scott is today’s weapon. For the next two seasons, Scott is the sharper fit: Premier League-ready and battle-tested, able to strengthen the engine room immediately while Bouaddi is still being tempered.

@Max8LFC Lacroix?

Not the only player we've contacted his agency about

@htomufc Thanks man

@raylang1708 38-0.app/game

Jan Bednarek almost got a golden prem trophy

@Doc_A_I Idk mahn seems like this have legs. why publish this if he and his reps didnt engage in the move. Going after 2 right footers might have made him rethink.

Olise plus €150m. For Cody Gakpo.

@zoneoccupation Even I was thinking the same why publish this if he and his reps didnt engage in the move.

This wouldn’t go public if there were no type of legs at all. Wonder if first team pathways at Bayern seem clearer given some of the wingers we need immediately

"I want to become one more of you." ✊

@SherekhanKlopp @pranav_m28 @hassinator Other than tchou is there any one who can do both right now?

@pranav_m28 @hassinator The wider issue is also that neither Jones nor Scott would help build a defensive floor in midfield. We’ve not replaced Fabinho for 8 years. Would be nice if we get on with it now.

I would once again like to reiterate that Curtis Jones and Alex Scott are very similar profiles. From both their on-ball data and physical data point of view. Only a direct swap makes sense as Scott is younger and has already been very impactful for Bournemouth.

@SherekhanKlopp Dreamt alot with wharton in the team mahn. Wanted to sign him somehow.

@raylang1708 Wouldn’t say Bournemouth had bad results every time they had the ball. Low blocks he has to figure out. Targets will change imo.

One of the most intriguing aspects of the #LFC decision to move from Arne Slot to Andoni Iraola is this debate that has focused on quality. Was Slot good enough? Is Iraola better? Did Liverpool make the correct decision? Those are not interesting questions. The interesting one is: what is the cost? Football philosophies do not exist in a vacuum. Every approach carries an opportunity cost. Time. Money. Recruitment. Collective Buy-In. The best ideas can fail if the environment around them cannot sustain them. This is larger than Liverpool. The Champions League final between Arsenal & PSG provided a glimpse into the future. PSG are often described as a ball dominant side, but that’s only half the story. Because what makes PSG exceptional isn’t what they do on the ball or how well they keep it, but what the team does when they lose it. Enrique himself has touched upon this. Once Mbappe left and the team began to get realigned with the right profiles in attack, the counter-press became a lightning rod for success. Compactness became more dominant. Their ability to attack small moments of instability in opposition defences transforms game-states. In many ways, they are less a pure ball dominant team and more a modern interpretation of many pressing teams that came before them. And especially following the Champions League final, that has led folks to conclude that football is moving away from possession and back to counter-pressing football. Not the case. Because PSG’s OOP superiority is still being created by their IP structure. Their structure on-the-ball forces ideal conditions for a successful counter-press. The spaces they attack are intentionally compact. The connections between the attackers are maintained. The rest defence stays solid. Players surround the ball in packs, so when the ball is lost? Win it back. But what happens is that people oscillate between two mindsets. Some remember the pressing, intensity and chaos. Others remember the long stretches of possession, spacing between players and passing patterns. The former exists primarily because of the latter. OOP still remains downstream of IP. So it brings us back to Arne Slot. Slot’s football is good. The ceiling of his in-possession model is extremely high. At its best, it produces control, territory, repeatable chance creation and sustained pressure. And like PSG, the IP structure will force conditions for counter-presses to emerge. It is what Slot did at Feyenoord, and also did to great effect at Liverpool in 24/25. It worked. And there is a reason many of Europe’s most progressive coaches have spent the last decade chasing variations of this idea. The challenge is the opportunity cost. To reach that ceiling, almost everything has to align. The squad has to be built in the right sequence. The profiles have to fit. The technical level has to remain exceptionally high. And the club has to remain patient while the final pieces arrive. Recruitment has to keep feeding the machine. Players have to not only be fit and sharp, but also available. These aren’t ideal conditions, but the system’s normal operating conditions. Slot and his staff do a tremendous amount of work alongside this, but it’s no easier. Slot highlighted these costs this past season. High squad turnover. Time required for new players to bed in. Injuries impacting player availability. Disruption impacting preparation. A small squad having to repeatedly go again. Players having to play out of position to hold the system together. The Premier League being more focused on low blocks, set pieces and physicality. His alternative solutions having a ceiling. Needing transfers to complete the squad. In some ways, Arne Slot wrote his own thesis for a change. PSG’s conditions are the opposite in so many ways. They have resources. They have patience. They have organisational alignment. Their domestic environment also allows them to refine behaviours that other clubs are forced to develop under far greater pressure. The dominant football philosophies in Ligue 1 do not consistently punish them for pursuing those ideas. They can spend months building fluency and collect the rewards in Europe, where the model has excelled. Liverpool and the Premier League do not have all of these conditions. So much is the opposite. And the cost to create them is too high. So a change is necessary to create conditions within acceptable cost parameters. And now, for the present. Andoni Iraola. Iraola’s football is good. The in-possession ceiling is probably lower. His teams are unlikely to dominate possession in the way Slot’s ideal side would. But the opportunity cost is dramatically lower. The squad profiles are easier to acquire. The model is more tolerant of imperfections. Success relies less on constructing the perfect machine and more on creating a collective capable of repeatedly winning moments. Importantly, this does not mean abandoning possession. It means managing the relationship between possession and pressing differently. An Arne Slot / Luis Enrique side looks to force counter-pressing conditions through technical superiority and positional control. Iraola looks to optimise them through athleticism, compactness, aggression and collective behaviours. Different routes. Similar destination. That doesn’t fully mean one approach is right and the other is wrong. Which is why this isn’t IP v OOP. Nor is it possession vs transitions. Moreover, Europe and the Premier League are not asking exactly the same questions. Domestically, Liverpool face a league built around physicality, transitions, set pieces, athleticism and increasingly sophisticated low blocks. In Europe, the strongest teams are becoming specialists at exploiting space, attacking moments of instability and overwhelming opponents immediately after possession changes hands. The best sides still value possession, but increasingly as a tool rather than an objective. And it's no surprise why Liverpool looked far more comfortable in Europe, until they faced PSG. I have to stress however, that Liverpool’s decision to change is not a reaction to the tactical meta or a sudden pivot from one extreme to the other. Slot’s ideal version of Liverpool would have contained balance too. More athleticism. More progression. More running power. More depth. The problem wasn’t necessarily the destination. It was the cost of the journey. Completing the squad required significant recruitment, significant patience and continued organisational commitment to a project that was only partially built. Liverpool appear to have looked at that road and concluded it was longer and more expensive than they were prepared to travel. And the most important factor - the dominant meta in the League - would simply not allow that direction. That, however, does not remove the challenge that lies ahead. Iraola has never been a truly ball-dominant coach. His league record across the last three seasons reads 13 wins, 15 wins and 13 wins. That does not mean he cannot succeed at Liverpool. Equally, it does not mean success is inevitable. Managing Bournemouth and managing Liverpool are fundamentally different assignments. The challenge is no longer simply implementing a style of play. It is evident that Liverpool have chosen to pursue high-pressing, high-intensity football. The challenge is finding the balance between the demands of the Premier League, the demands of Europe and the expectations that come with competing for major honours every season. If Liverpool genuinely believe the current environment is more conducive to a model that leans slightly towards compactness, athleticism and counter-pressing rather than possession dominance, then the responsibility shifts to the club. They have to create a fertile environment for Andoni Iraola’s vision to succeed. That means recruiting intelligently. Not just players, but coaches and support staff too. It means complete alignment between recruitment and the manager. It means insulating the dressing room from external noise. It means ensuring the squad is fully bought into the new direction. Most importantly, it means avoiding another strategic pivot three years from now. Every pivot resets timelines. Every pivot introduces friction. Every pivot delays progress. Liverpool cannot afford to keep bouncing between partially completed ideas. Football’s tactical landscape will continue to evolve. The principles required to build a successful football operation rarely do. Jurgen Klopp benefited from them. Arne Slot benefited from them during his title-winning season. Arne Slot in his second season, was greatly let down in this regard. Liverpool would do well to remember that and recalibrate. Fix yesterday's mistakes today. And once that is all said and done? We will see whether their decision is justified in the long run. But it brings us back to where we started. Every football idea carries a cost. The clubs that best understand those costs, and remain aligned around the most sustainable path forward, will be the ones who shape what comes next. Over to you, #LFC.

@SherekhanKlopp @CalvLyfeson Do you think all the targets who were mentioned till now gonna change now. Diomande Barcola wharton etc

@CalvLyfeson Too early to tell. The first market point is recruitment. That will be most informative.

Anyone have concerns about Iraola's Liverpool in possession?

@TheKopHQ @heing2111 @TheFull9inety @IverHanrahanGP @Micks2B Heard anything on slot mate?

@heing2111 @TheFull9inety @IverHanrahanGP @Micks2B Nothing mate

@SherekhanKlopp Hi man i have a question about base being set in the pre season.Last season due to euros we didnt have all the players to set the base right? Same the case when we dont do the transfers earlier so how does this transfer to the new players or the one who misses the preseason?

Regarding players returning from injury and showing rhythm mid-season vs a collective being disrupted at the outset. When one player misses pre-season or gets injured mid-season, reintegration is easier because the collective already has rhythm, fitness and intensity. They’re plugging into a stable base. When a whole group goes through it, that base doesn’t exist in the way it’s supposed to. They’re not reintegrating into rhythm, they’re trying to rebuild it while competing every three days. Completely different problem, especially when injuries overlap. We’ve literally seen it. Salah, Trent, Robertson all go down around Feb 2024, then return into a side that had already lost some flow. None of them hit rhythm straight away, and their reintegration coincided with performances wobbling through late March into April. Not because of ‘quality’, but because continuity had already been disrupted, then reset again alongside other factors. One player plugs into rhythm. Multiple players returning at once resets it. Also, individual rehab is bespoke. You can control load, intensity, progression. You can’t do that with an entire squad mid-season because they still have to play, and fixture congestion kills that control. Availability is one layer. Continuity is the real one. Break that, and it doesn’t just switch back on.

@SherekhanKlopp @liverpaul66 Hi man i have a question about base being set in the pre season.Last season due to euros we didnt have all the players to set the base right? Same the case when we dont do the transfers earlier so how does this transfer to the new players or the one who misses the preseason?

@liverpaul66 Yup.

I think this season has shown how valuable preseason really is

@SherekhanKlopp @TomArmour79 @L4fckop Hi man But i have a doubt about base being set in the pre season.Last season due to euros we didnt have all the players to set the base right? Same the case when we dont do the transfers earlier so how does this transfer to the new players or the one who misses the preseason?

Have a read of what I wrote. Covered the 24/25 season as well. But for safety. There was a drop-off towards the back end of 24/25. But that was fatigue. Smaller squad, heavy minutes, legs going late. The base was there, it just got depleted. That’s why performances held for most of the season. They ran out of gas, not structure. This season is different. The base was never properly built in the first place. That’s deficit, not depletion. The symptoms can look similar, but they don’t come from the same place.

Let’s say right that they severely underestimated the fitness of the squad. One of the most easily fixable situations that doesn’t actually require spend on new players. Surely Slot has realized flaws in his preseason prep (if that is the issue) and training methods.

@srivatsank24 @tomgooner84 @sbzcomps Why waste your time arguing with an arsenal fan

@tomgooner84 @sbzcomps beyond that??!! Real Madrid or City; Liverpool or Galatasaray or PSG or Chelsea(mostly expecting it to be Madrid and Liverpool or PSG).. y'all have got Bozo Gimps(yes Ill call em that even though they beat us) or Sporting

Arsenals run in cup competitions so far this season League Cup - Port Vale, Brighton, Crystal Palace, Chelsea Fa Cup - Portsmouth, Wigan, Mansfield Champions League - Leverkusen, Sporting / Bodo Glimt 😂😂😂

@aziztactics The way gakpo holds this team back is too much

Can see Wirtz on the left instead of Gakpo and Jones instead of Mac Allister long term. Would improve this Liverpool team even more.

@AnfieldWatch Mac allister

What is the one thing you'd change if you were Arne Slot right now? 🤔

@samuelap1_ It seems perfectly understandable. But the real question is do we have the profiles for this coherent in possession tactics. Our playing out from the back looks really bad with each passing game weeks. How do solve it with the current profiles?

It sounds weird to say but if/when Liverpool start to improve, it will primarily be because the buildup and in-possession has improved, which will then have a positive impact on what we do out-of-possession. It won’t be the other way around.

@LewisFN00 If you are genuinely looking for an apocalypse boom go and read the The Stand

Preferably apocalypse books