Holmesy

I think the only way he walks is if he loses final say on transfers and is under pressure to play certain players in a bid to increase their value. Based on everything he said in his presser, it doesn't sound like that's going to happen. He's realistic about us having to trade players as well by the sound of it so as long as he gets to decide on their replacements, from a pool of scouted players, it sounds like it's business as usual.

Not sure it'll be true either. Apparently Richard Hughes, Liverpool Sporting Director is one of Eddie's best pals from their Bournemouth days.

We'll be in agreement about some of them no doubt. But I do believe in general clubs start talking to agents early and get a good sense of their chances of signing a player. So either we got lied to a lot by player agents, other (more attractive) clubs came in late and turned the player's head or we didn't do enough groundwork and left ourselves in a reactive state.

It seemed like the lack of planning and groundwork on signings undid us as much as anything else. Don't think our selling of the club was up to much either but both of those fall to the D0F I assume, and we didn't have one. If we're going to sell Tonali before buying his replacement, we need to have as concrete an agreement in place with his replacement as possible. Obviously agents and other clubs coming in late can always derail things but hopefully the prep work is well underway already to avoid another situation like last summer.

Works for Donald Trump.....

Hopefully looking at Murilo and using Williams as a smokescreen

Yeah, I think that’s going to be hard to shake for all of us until we see change. Positive noises are a good start though.

Obviously rumours are just rumours but I like the noises coming out - if there’s any truth to them, it’s signals the direction I think most of hoped we’d go in. Exciting times!

He looks mint but you can see why more decent attackers come out of South America than defenders!

I can relate.

My memory is not what it used to be i'm sad to say Come to think of it, it's never been that great - always amazed when mates can rattle off games and results from distant world cups. I recall the Ramsey one against Barca but you can hardly say that cost us the game - we were already a couple of goals down by that point weren't we? I remember the Thiaw slip as well - that was unfortunate. Again though, these are unfortunate footballing incidents, not down to Eddie.

What am I, a filing cabinet of all of our performances? No, I can't remember the last time a loss was down to an individual player error. Can you, off the top of your head? As I said, if it happens, it's on the player. That is not something Eddie can do anything about, it's just football.

Give me one example of when I've done that? For me, the buck stops with the manager. I certainly don't think any of our successes are despite Eddie, they're because of him. But I also believe the situation we find ourselves in this season are largely down to him too. He deserves the praise when we win but he also deserves the criticism when we lose and our approach or his lack of in-game changes are to blame. If it's a tight game and we lose, fair enough, losses happen in football. Likewise, If a player has an absolute calamity and costs us a game, that's not on Eddie at all but I can't remember the last time that happened.

Go on....?

Shades of R9 in that video.

It's completely relevant. You can't give Eddie credit for the good but blame the players for the bad.

Which is why i think the style of play issue is underplayed if anything. I'm not suggesting Eddie turn into Rafa, but Rafa built us into a resilient team that was far better than the sum of its parts with many Championship players and very little investment. I would far rather we lose some attacking intent but become more defensively resolute. This season, we haven't lost games because of our attack - we can still score goals - we've lost them because we concede a boat load late on and constantly leave our defence exposed, and there are no obvious signs of it being addressed. Eddie is a front foot, attacking manager and that's great - when it's good it's exciting to watch but when it's bad we look naive as fuck, and badly coached. Building from a solid defensive base is sensible . We don't necessarily have to go backwards to go forwards, we could just tighten the fuck up, which should conserve energy in the process.

Completely ignores the fact that the whole premise of the comment was about the impact on confidence of a loss, nothing at all to do with the maths.

Is Eddie responsible for all the wins we've had?

I don't think there are many saying that. What people, myself included, have been doing is not looking at the table from a zoomed out view and going "incredible". We've been saying "incredible, but", zooming in a bit (plus actually watching the games) and looking at the goals conceded columns, for example - if we improve that by 10-20%, it could represent a significant improvement without spending a fortune, and should be something we concentrate on in our next phase. It might sound a bit glass half empty but the defensive side of our game is weak - people who cite losing Isak as the key reason we are where we are, are not necessarily wrong, but you could also say that if the manager focussed more on defence, that reduction in goal-threat is mitigated a lot more. We can't always be a "score more goals than them at all costs" team. At some point we have to transition back to a "score more goals than them but if we can't, keep them out" team.

Cool name as well.

I get that, but if Eddie was to walk for example, we automatically become a team that chops & changes its manager doesn't seem to stack up. Granted, we're not particularly well run so it might happen but it's not a given.

Out of interest, where does this come from? I've seen it mentioned a few times on here - why do we automatically become a club that chops and changes its manager if Eddie was to leave for whatever reason? Could be that he decides to leave by the way.

FWIW, and i've said this 100 times on here, I don't want Eddie to leave, I want him to evolve. The very best managers do, and the concern is that Eddie isn't showing any overt signs of evolution, whether it's because of "mitigating circumstances" or being wedded to his ideas. And by evolution, I don't mean small tactical changes. I mean keeping & protecting the ball, learning to be tighter and less naive in the final 20 minutes of games, conserving energy, better in-game management - being able to counter our opposition's changes, controlling games rather than the whole thing feeling chaotic etc. That is and has been my stance throughout. He at least deserves the summer and next season (or some of it) to show that he's developing, not doing more of the same with different players because we know it isn't sustainable - that has been proven twice. Maybe the summer disrupted his ability to embed new ideas, maybe too many games and not enough training time have stopped him adopting a new playing style and developing our new signings, maybe he doesn't want to move away from what he knows and trusts. The only way we're going to know is to let him show us. He's a world class human being and an unbelievable ambassador for the football club, and I think we all genuinely hope he can kick on to the next level but if not, I don't believe there should be any room for sentiment - you've taken us on an incredible journey, thank you for everything but we need to bring in someone whose ideas better suit the next phase of our growth.

This is true 😀 but again, not really relevant to the discussion pal. I’m guessing Eddie is your King?