The FSG stance on Arne Slot, but others must take some Liverpool blame
Dutch boss has come under fire as Reds face battle to qualify for Champions League
There was a time, not too long ago, where the manager reigned supreme.
The Sir Alex Ferguson years at Manchester United and Arsene Wenger at Arsenal were very much standouts in the era of the ‘big manager’. Roll back the years some, and it was Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley and Don Revie. The heads of their clubs to whom deference was served, and where the pieces on the pitch were put together by design, by their own hand.
That model has changed now. The era of that type of manager has passed, and in truth, given the finances involved in acquiring players in the market nowadays, it is probably wise from a business sense. We are in the era of sporting directors and transfer by committee, where the players are signed based on analysis from a whole team of people, with some input from the manager, with the idea being that the thesis remains intact should the man at the top not deliver results.
Even Jurgen Klopp didn’t have carte blanche to go out and sign who he wanted. Sure, he had allies high up and was a man who could make a persuasive argument, but he still had to play the game, to an extent, with owners Fenway Sports Group.
Making decisions about recruitment using data analytics isn’t a bad thing. If Manchester United had adopted such an approach and focused on bringing in a real sporting director after Ferguson left then they would have likely avoided the pain they have suffered over the last 13 years, where chopping and changing managers with different approaches and different styles, who were allowed to operate in the market in the old Ferguson way, signed players who were for the benefit for their present, not for the club’s future. What that meant was these players turned into being the detritus of previous regimes, hard to move on and onerous on the wage bill, serving no purpose for the next person at the helm.
