PEP MUSIC
Following his side’s Bigger Cup win over what currently passes for the reigning champions on Wednesday night, Arne Slot told TNT Sports he was looking forward to spending a little bit of downtime with his family, who were over in Merseyside for the week from the Netherlands. While it might have seemed an odd thing for a Premier League manager to admit with a game against Manchester City to prepare for, one suspects most Liverpool fans wouldn’t have batted an eyelid if he’d announced he was going to spend the next few days slumped in a Bold Street doorway while painted bright orange and slurping from a bottle of Buckfast, because in Arne they trust and if that’s what he thinks will help get his side a result on Sunday then it’s fine by them.
In stark contrast, Slot’s Manchester City counterpart was forced to devote a chunk of his midweek post-match media duties by explaining away some self-inflicted abrasions on his noggin following his side’s remarkable capitulation against Feyenoord. And while one suspects the increasingly stressed Pep Guardiola has been focusing with laser-like intensity on how best to halt Manchester City’s run of three league defeats, it is to be hoped he has found a spare five minutes to cut his fingernails or his technical area at Anfield on Sunday could end up resembling a butcher’s slab.
“Of course, I am thinking what I can do to help them but in the long career as a player and a manager you live these situations,” said the man who in his long career as a player and a manager has not lived anything like the situation in which he currently finds himself. “When you live it, accept it and challenge it. No complaining, no blaming, no pointing the figure or running from your responsibility. If you don’t win, you’re in trouble, I know that.” Should City lose, it will be the first time they have been beaten in four consecutive top-flight league games in a season since 2007, when they notched five on the bounce against Chelsea and four other teams that have long since departed the Premier League. And while Liverpool go into the game as strong favourites, should City upset the odds and the Sky cameras repeatedly cut away to a beaming Noel Gallagher, it would almost certainly mark the end of the current mini-crisis and put the spring back in the collective step.
“They are still a very, very, very good team and one of the reasons I think Pep Guardiola is the best manager in the world is that he always comes up with solutions for his problems,” said Slot in the press conference he conducted yesterday, presumably on the grounds that he and the family were taking advantage of The Beatles Story Black Friday special offer down on the Albert Dock. “His problem now might be that Rodri is out but we all know, at least I think, that he will come with a solution and their run of form will go up again – hopefully after Sunday.” Whether or not it will be another manic Monday for Pep, only time will tell.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
I was a football player. Videos more than 12 minutes? Forget it, because of concentration … Instead of video, we do it like walking and jogging – it’s a way to do it. And showing some videos” – Ruben Amorim, there, on how some of his tactical Manchester United sessions will have be played out like a game of walking football because his players are so tired.
FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS
I only read Big Website of course (ahem), but on the few occasions I approach the rest of the internet looking for information, my favourite type of article is rapidly becoming famous footballers ‘colloborating with brands’, lowering themselves to hawking rubbish for money they don’t even need and trying to justify it on the basis that they co-designed ‘the perfect bag’ with such deep insights into the creative process like ‘I travel so much and I wanted something which had lots of pockets. You have to have deep pockets’” – Noble Francis.
Having seen the quote from PSV’s defender Ryan Flamingo in yesterday’s Bigger Cup Corner, I couldn’t help but wonder if they might not have needed such a comeback from 2-0 down had Ryan not been standing on one leg” – Nick Jeffery.
It must have come as something of a shock to young Chelsea fans to see serial Chelsea badge-kisser Frank Lampard turning out in a Hammers shirt in Thursday’s Football Daily. Now the old boy is off to Ryton, to coach the 1987 FA Cup winners. Imagine next season. Lampard’s Chelsea reserves versus potentially Ruud van Nistelrooy’s Leicester in the M69 derby. It won’t just be the managers wondering what the M69 is, or why it is a derby” – Steve Roberts.
Send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s letter o’ the day winner is …. Nick Jeffery, who lands their very own piece of Football Weekly merch. Terms and conditions for our competitions can be viewed here.
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