Sicario2 - Tier 1 There is no guarantee that someone like Inzaghi will win us a title. He's won 1 title in 4/5 years at Inter hasn't he? He is a top coach but I don't think he is better than Arteta. We've gone a fucking great manager who has turned this club around, the disrespect he gets is unreal. This season has been a massive disappointment and we've got nobody to blame but ourselves but last two seasons it was just bad luck and the year before we peaked too early and couldn't keep it going.

Not winning a trophy can mean a lot of things, you say poor squad building but I'd argue we have one of the best squads in the world. We just don't have enough numbers and that has to be addressed in the summer. If this summer goes bad then I think the mood around the club will change for the worse and very quickly. We have a good summer we elevate ourselves onto the next level.

Sicario2 - Tier 1 1) You think that Arteta is the man because things are out of his control? Next year if we don’t win anything again it’s ok because in 2022 we finished 5th?

2) Nuance for you is important but that only gets your so far. Trophies are binary esp when it comes to a longer period. Nuance you can use for 1,2, 3 seasons but how long will you use nuance to cover up accountability?

3) what we did 4/5 years ago is immaterial. In your job if you do poorly this year, would you tell your manager ‘but in 2021 if I did the same performance you would be happy?’ We should be thinking and moving forwards.

I give up.

RocktheCasbah good for you. Your arguments hold no weight in the real world.

JazzG they’re never guarantees but trying with the same manager year on year and getting no results is worse. Is there a guarantee with Arteta?

Inzaghi has gotten his team to a CL final and won a league - more than Artera. Inter beat us in their own back yard this season too.

Woah...a lot to unpack here. Not going to respond to it all coherently and others have articulated a lot of what I think already but a couple of reflections:

1. Success is not as binary as has been made out. You have to apply context to every situation, as Jazz and others have explained. We should judge each season on its own merits and within the context it was completed. It's also relative; you should judge it based on where we've come from. Slot winning the league in his first season ignores the context of Liverpool being consistently competitive for a number of years under Klopp (plus...Mo Salah as a generational talent).

2. Secondly and apologies if this more personal but I think managing your own expectations has to come into this discussion. The trajectory of this season has been telegraphed for some time based on the clear problems we've had up front all season. And that was a failing of the summer window, the way we approached it as a club etc. But if you constantly recalibrate your expectations to 'high' every time there's even a sniff of weakness from our rivals, you're going to end up being more devasted than you need to be and subsequently project our situation as being far more dire than it actually is. Which is why everyone from the Kroenke's down to Arteta, our captain and most of the other players are getting accused of being failures this week. Which I don't believe is accurate or in proportion. The club fucked up this summer but to suggest that everyone involved in this project is a failure is misaligned to reality.

Sicario2 - Tier 1 We aren't getting no results, like I said this year is down to poor squad numbers but last year we pushed City hard until the end. You could argue Klopp had a better side and only managed one title. I wouldn't class his time as a failure.

Inter beat with a bit of a dodgy pen, it was a very close game but thought we looked better than them on the day. I rate Inzaghi but I don't agree that bringing him in will win us anything or make us any better.

Like I said the summer will tell us a lot, if we sign the players we need I see no reason we can't push on. The level we are now is our floor level with all these players injured. Liverpool will win the title but if they had injuries like us they wouldn't even be in the top 4 let alone

QuincyAbeyie

I think I'm just looking at a game like last night's and a point away at the team directly below us and not really understanding why everyone's so pissed off about our struggles to score goals given the state of the forward line at the moment.

I get there's a wider point about the summer recruitment and it's completely fair to say it was disastrous, but in the here and now of not having any of our first choice front three + Jesus available, it's not really rocket science that we are struggling. And it's not like we're in the first ten games and Forest's league position is a mirage, at this point in the season they're up there by right.

Don Pacifico nor do I believe his approach to squad building is what's got us here

I don’t understand how anyone can reasonably come to that view. Genuinely open to hearing the justification as I just can’t look at the signings Arteta has made for the front three positions (excluding Havertz as that clearly wasn’t the original intention) and think it isn’t a contributory factor when you consider how widely he has been backed for other signings.

Tam it’s very easy to come to that view actually. For a few reasons

1) Forward market is much more competitive than defense and midfield market. Look at the money spent on guys like Mudryk, Sancho, Grealish etc. There are no middling defenders going for £80m. People just value forwards more (cos game is about goals) ans will pay much more

2. This cost is partly driven by low supply. Academies are training midfielders and defenders. Teams often have 1-2 actual strikers.
3. Some of our very best forwards were academy grads. So we didn’t have to go spend £150m on Saka and Martinelli. We’d made them.

Yeah. This season is a show of shit. But when Arteta himself has come out many times to say he wants forwards, and we’ve made bids, the idea that he doesn’t want forwards just doesn’t fly.

Tam because I still believe there are plans in place to fix our forward line. If I didn't think that, then I'd question our squad building.

Our attack was prolific last season. Despite this, we all knew there were still weaknesses, as did Arteta hence why we were looking at forwards in the summer. The fact we didn't sign any isn't a flaw of squad building.

Don Pacifico one of the issues I had with the we scored the most goals argument last season which got transferred into we don't need more in attack, was that we scored lots of goals in some games but failed to score in too many and we've seen that again. This is a problem the team has had for two seasons and we don't seem to have been and to respond to it. There have been too many 0 games in the last 2 years and that costs you titles.

RocktheCasbah In your world, you either win or you don't and that's fine, my uncle is the same.

Anyone else starting to think RtCs "uncle" is just a voice in his head? Its all the bad thoughts he has that he doesn't want to admit to himself? Like a little devil on his shoulder.

I'm just putting this out there because I think its more interesting than the discussion about sacking Arteta.

Qwiss you got me. My real name is Tyler Durden.

Claudius
70m on Merino and Calafiori - the latter being one of the more complicated deals these last few years - while getting in Sterling who got fuck all minutes certainly insinuates that he has either unrealistic demands from his forward targets or some other problem. We don't struggle to get defender or goalies over the line, even now we have Zubimendi and another goalie on the horizon but Jesus and Trossard in eleven windows is just shocking.