Slot accused of obvious Newcastle point and 'dangerous game' as Howe 'hits back' at Liverpool

Arne Slot has probably been lost in translation, but is also just right if not. He is playing a ‘dangerous game’ at Liverpool and Newcastle coach Eddie Howe has ‘hit back’.

Slot’s going on?

We start with this headline from The Sun website:

‘Van Dijk convinced Liverpool clear-the-air crisis meeting was key to thumping Frankfurt… but Slot did NOT attend’

…because it was specifically a players-only meeting. Be a bit weird if Slot randomly rocked up and took a chair in between Curtis Jones and Federico Chiesa. More newsworthy, certainly.

It is strange that Charlie Wyett saw fit to include the clarification in the copy, writing that Van Dijk ‘called the player summit – which boss Arne Slot did not attend’, as if the clue isn’t contained entirely within the phrase ‘player summit’.

But that capitalisation in the headline is a particularly egregious flourish. Was there ever a suggestion that Slot DID attend a meeting he wasn’t invited to?

Dangerous liaisons

The Dutchman was probably too busy making a ‘dangerous Liverpool decision’ to show up anyway.

Jeremy Cross of the Daily Star believes Slot ‘deserves huge praise’ for dropping Mo Salah as ‘it’s what Salah deserved’.

But then immediately ‘that show of strength’ was apparently ‘reduced to one of utter weakness before the second half had even kicked off’ because Slot replaced Alexander Isak at half time with Federico Chiesa, only giving Salah the final 15 minutes or so.

Not sure how dropping your best-paid player and the club’s attacking talisman for the last eight seasons suddenly becomes an example of ‘utter weakness’ if you introduce him in the 74th minute rather than the 46th but please do go on.

‘Never mind Chiesa, but if one Liverpool player needs some confidence and momentum bleeding into him, it is Salah not the Italian.’

Chiesa had a goal or assist every 34.2 minutes this season before the Frankfurt game; Salah’s ratio was one every 153.8 minutes. Perhaps Slot was simply rewarding the good form of a player who hadn’t even featured in the Champions League this season until that point?

‘Salah trotted onto the pitch like someone who’d won the booby prize in a raffle. A footballing legend reduced to a cameo role in a production that had already been completed.’

He is not playing well and Liverpool have other options who deserve opportunities too. If Salah scored from any of his three shots – no player had more all game – it would have been declared a masterclass in squad management. He messed up his chance in that cameo.

‘Slot has puffed out his chest and produced a show of strength. But watch this space. Because Salah knows he deserves much more respect than what Slot is now showing him.’

Salah probably also knows you have to play well to stay in a team competing for trophies on four fronts. Slot is arguably showing more respect by holding him to those high standards instead of randomly making him exempt.

‘It feels like a dangerous game for Slot to be playing.’

What absolute nonsense. It’s not even vaguely been explained how Slot’s ‘show of strength’ soon became an example of ‘utter weakness’ and now he is playing ‘a dangerous game’ by giving a horribly out-of-form player 26 minutes rather than 45?

READ MORE: Slot piles pressure on Liverpool with ‘we were not able’ nonsense

Howe about that

A mere passing knowledge of Eddie Howe and his intense media-trained personality is more than enough to raise a few red flags with this Daily Mirror website headline:

‘Eddie Howe hits back at Liverpool boss Arne Slot after sly Newcastle United jibe’

And the quotes do not disappoint. Well they absolutely do; they’re remarkably boring. But they confirm the suspicion that at no point would Howe have been dragged into a complete non-story and ‘hit back’ with an impassioned rant of his own.

“I don’t think it is wise for me to get involved in those discussions. Alex is no longer at this football club. So I won’t comment on it.

“The set-up is here is very good. It is not perfect, we’ve got things to improve and to grow. The club and the owners here have developed the facilities very well and you can see there is building work going on.

“Hopefully that will help us be even better in the future. But I have got no complaints, we have elite athletes here, many of them, touch wood they are managing pretty well.”

You know where to apply the ointment for that sick burn, Arne.

Stating the obvious

Those Slot quotes have very likely been lost in the translation of a man speaking in his second language, misconstrued – perhaps deliberately – because any manager using the phrase “smaller club” is remarkably evocative.

It would have made no sense whatsoever in the context Slot was using to describe Newcastle as such when talking about the fitness of Alexander Isak, when he said:

“I don’t think there’s a rule that every single player has the same. But it also depends on what he did when he didn’t train with the team, what the impact is if you go to a new club as a big signing.

“So you cannot compare, maybe a player who hasn’t trained or played in pre-season at a smaller club than if you go to Liverpool. There are many factors that you have to take into account and there is not one thing if it’s possible or not.”

That can be taken in a couple of different ways but obviously the clickiest and most eye-catching is to pretend that Slot suddenly and randomly decided to take a shot at Newcastle, when the Dutchman was very possibly simply saying you cannot compare Isak’s situation to that of a different player who joined a “smaller club”.

But this Sky Sports headline from the Slot quotes is great:

‘Arne Slot: Newcastle are a smaller club compared to Liverpool’

Yes. Agreed. Next week, ‘Arne Slot: I have less hair than Jurgen Klopp’.

Elephant in the Roon

‘Heartbreaking reason why Wayne Rooney is banned from watching son Kai’s football matches’ – Daily Mirror website.

It’s not exactly an FA-sanctioned suspension. The son of one of the most famous players in English football history has just requested that he not watch anymore because it’s too much of a distraction.

He is basically ‘banned’ from watching in the same way a child might ‘ban’ their parent from feeding them fruit. Which is to say he obviously isn’t sodding ‘banned’ at all.

Surprise, surprise

‘Bernardo Silva pinpoints key area of improvement that has inspired Man City’s strong run of form as star identifies surprise teammate who makes Pep Guardiola’s team ‘much better” – MailOnline.

You’d better sit down for the reveal of the ‘surprise teammate’ who makes Manchester City better: what even is a ‘John Stones’?

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