Next Manager Watch

Dov67 said:

That’s exactly the point - he is making decisions for the good of Daniel Levy not for the good of THFC

Click to expand...

Ghost Hardware said:

If we are still adding names at this point it really doesn't bode well. No wonder Nagelsmann ran a mile when he realised the lack of direction from the higher ups. I thought Munn was supposed to help in this regard.

Click to expand...

Now it's Spursonal said:

But what if that name is Gallardo?

But no seriously, absolute madness if the list is still expanding.

Click to expand...

felmani26 said:

There will be 10 league games played post Antonio Conte.

Considering the makeup of the top 4/European places and the points separation i'd say there was alot to play for which we essentially pissed away.

Click to expand...

yellowbean said:

Its crazy we hadn't agreed on a contingency plan when the possibility of Conte not renewing had been brewing for months.

Click to expand...

Dov67 said:

I still cannot get my head around the fact that he could have appointed Poch 6 weeks ago, doubled or perhaps trebled our chances of getting his Sacred f****g Top 4, but instead put Stellini in charge and is prepared to see Poch manage Chelsea rather than admit he f***d it all up by not listening to him from 2017/18 onwards before firing him in 2019.

That is a Gold Medal, Grade A egotistical narcissism

Levy, ENIC, the whole board are poison

Click to expand...

mil1lion said:

I think it matters having a clear idea of who you want though, otherwise you risk running out of options down the line. We should have a clear 1st, 2nd and 3rd choice. If the 1st (I guess Nagelsmann) is off the cards then move to the 2nd. Its a big issue if you can't decide on the 2nd. It doesn't help not having a DOF though either. I think we just need to get a DOF in ASAP and let them take over the decision alongside Munn. Too many people involved is not a good way to run a club. The same goes for DOF though as should have had someone identified months ago.

Click to expand...

mil1lion said:

I think it matters having a clear idea of who you want though, otherwise you risk running out of options down the line. We should have a clear 1st, 2nd and 3rd choice. If the 1st (I guess Nagelsmann) is off the cards then move to the 2nd. Its a big issue if you can't decide on the 2nd. It doesn't help not having a DOF though either. I think we just need to get a DOF in ASAP and let them take over the decision alongside Munn. Too many people involved is not a good way to run a club. The same goes for DOF though as should have had someone identified months ago.

Click to expand...

sidford said:

Here's the article

Arne Slot – a champion with Feyenoord and a manager coveted by the Pr…

archived 14 May 2023 21:20:39 UTC

archive.is

Click to expand...

Trix said:

You reckon?

Click to expand...

Trix said:

It's literally what happened last time, and how we ended up with Nuno.

Click to expand...

Hoopspur said:

Well we know who’s not on the list. Must indicate something.

Click to expand...

barry said:

Why doesn't everyone act like Brighton then? Why don't most clubs with genuine aspirations do the same? All about expectations buddy, if you can't see that, fair enough.

Click to expand...

mil1lion said:

If we had got Fonseca at least that would have been done in June. Sadly he was too attack minded for Paratici. Then Gattuso was met with backlash from fans. My hope this time is we get a DOF who doesn't need to wait until he can start and who has a clear on field strategy that fans can get behind.

Click to expand...

muppetman said:

I'd say every other thread on the board being overrun with talk about Levy and ENIC would suggest nothing is being swept under the carpet. I guess I'm just a bit bored of the constant "sky is falling" in every single thread.

Click to expand...

Trix said:

Oh mate I see things better than most, because I have more evidence to go by. As someone that has successfully run a company for many years I can tell you as the boss the best decisions you can make, are letting those that know more about specific areas than you do make the decisions for that area. That doesn't matter if you are a 5 man work force or ICI.

Click to expand...

Trix said:

You have to remember by the time FP started getting involved we'd either been turned down by, or we'd alienated half the candidates with our pissing around.

Click to expand...

Arne Slot - a champion with Feyenoord and a manager coveted by the Premier League​

May 14, 2023
In 2020-21, the season before Arne Slot became their manager, Feyenoord finished 29 points behind champions Ajax. They came fifth, the same number of points from the top of the table as they were from the bottom three, with the football under Dick Advocaat very uninspiring.
Two years later and the Rotterdam club are champions following Sunday’s win at home to Go Ahead Eagles, with two games to spare having spent virtually the whole season leading the Eredivisie. They last lost a league game in September, when they succumbed to a late goal in a 4-3 defeat at PSV Eindhoven.
Theirs has been a remarkable turnaround but, perhaps more than just results, it has been the way Feyenoord have won this title that will ensure Slot is in demand in the summer. High-energy, attacking, exciting football are the markers of his teams, but they win, too. And win a lot. In England alone, Tottenham, Leeds, Crystal Palace and a few others will be looking for a new head coach. Slot will likely be on most of those lists.
So what sort of coach might they be targeting? Will he be the latest Dutchman to come to England and make sense of a chaotic Premier League club? And who exactly is Arne Slot?
Arne Slot was slow.
As a player, Slot was a perfectly decent midfielder, with the bulk of his appearances coming in the Dutch second tier. He was technically very good, usually playing as an attacking midfielder or No 10 but, in the words of his former team-mate Edwin de Graaf, he was “not so fast”. Slot the coach once said that he would not have picked Slot the player.
This meant he had to rely on others around him to do a lot of the running. “I was a hard worker, he was the more technical player,” says De Graaf, who played alongside him at NAC Breda.

Slot challenges Newcastle’s Nolberto Solano (Photo: Adam Davy/EMPICS via Getty Images)
But his limitations as a player have helped him become the coach he is today because they enhanced his appreciation of how to make a team function as a cohesive unit. He was living proof that one player cannot do his job unless a colleague is doing theirs.
He was always going to be a coach, moving from the playing squad to the coaching staff at PEC Zwolle immediately after his retirement.
“Some players you can see are going to be coaches,” says De Graaf. “I also played with Alfred Schreuder (the former Ajax manager) and both him and Slot… nobody is surprised now they’re both coaches.
“He would ask the coach why they were using certain tactics. And in the dressing room, he would talk to the group about (for example) a way of pressing or defending. He would ask: ‘Why were we doing it this way? Would it be better to do it this way?’. He would make suggestions to his coaches.
“But he would do it in such a good way. He wouldn’t do it with an attitude: he would ask the coach: ‘What do you think about this?’. He would also very quickly see what the opponents were doing.”At that time, he was already looking in an analytical way,” Henk ten Cate, who brought Slot to Breda, told Voetbal International last year. “He was busy with tactics and asked questions at training.”

It is worth noting this was not when Slot was in the twilight of his career and was worrying about what would come next. Slot and Ten Cate worked together in 2002/03 when Slot was 24. He was one of those players who used his time on the pitch as an extended apprenticeship for when he moved to the touchline.

Slot hung up his boots in 2013 after playing for PEC Zwolle and immediately joined the club’s youth academy as a coach.

He then spent three years as a coach at Cambuur, who had just been promoted to the Eredivisie, after which he moved to AZ Alkmaar to be assistant to manager John van den Brom, still only 39 when he took that job. “We always searched for young, new coaches,” says Van den Brom. “He was an interesting coach because he wanted to develop.”

It was during these years Slot clarified what sort of football he wanted to play, helped by a series of formative relationships with other coaches.

At AZ, there was Van den Brom and Marcel Jansen (now AZ’s head coach), while at Cambuur he worked closely with Marcel Keizer, who would go on to manage Ajax and Sporting Lisbon. He also shared ideas with Pep Ljinders, now Jurgen Klopp’s assistant at Liverpool, and, with a group of other coaches, created a bespoke player database. At the time, the data resources available to them were far from adequate, so they built their own.

“What was nice for me is that he always thought in an attacking way,” says Van den Brom, before mentioning something that comes up time and again whenever you speak to someone about Slot.

“(His focus was) how can we make it clear to the players how we want to play? We were always searching for different ideas.” It is fine for a coach to have ideas, but they have to be clearly transmitted to the players. Slot’s biggest quality and one he places significant emphasis on — he believes only 60 per cent is the idea and 40 per cent is how clearly you explain it — is his ability to communicate. His ideas are projected onto the pitch because his thoughts are clear and his words are carefully chosen.

So what are those ideas?

“They’re very attacking, very aggressive, with a lot of pressing,” says Martijn Krabbendam, a journalist for Voetbal International who has covered Slot’s Feyenoord. “High intensity, a lot of energy, and they can only do that if they’re very fit.

“He always wants to play attacking football, he always wants possession, he always wants a good set-up from the goalkeeper to find free space and free players in the midfield. It’s no secret he is crazy about Guardiola — he’s an example.”

Van den Brom adds: “We used a lot of videos of Manchester City and Bayern — he was crazy about Pep. How his teams create space, how they attack.”

Guardiola is the name that keeps coming up, but Slot also takes inspiration from a variety of other coaches: Marcelo Bielsa, Jorge Sampaoli, Jurgen Klopp, Luciano Spaletti, Mikel Arteta. All have their own ideas, so does he, but one thing they all have in common is their intensity.

Before he became Breda coach, De Graaf spent a week with Slot at Feyenoord, observing how he works. “Every session is with high intensity,” he says. “Every workout, passing drill, or five vs five — everything is with high intention and everything is with an idea. Every player knows exactly what he wants from them. He’s good at making clear why he’s doing certain exercises.

“He’s as honest as possible, so the players really like him.”

Slot believes his teams have to be intense because it essentially gives them two ways to win: if the quality of their play is lower than that of their opponents or they are having an off day, they can win by outrunning and outworking whoever they are playing.

There is also a recognition of, and mitigation against, the fitness concerns that come with such an intense style of not just playing, but training. He works closely with his data and fitness teams: when they tell him a player’s numbers are dropping or they are in the ‘red zone’, he will ease off.

Transitions are quick and passing is certain. Slot likes to work with younger players who are keen to learn. “If you have a young group, then, as a trainer, you can take the boys through videos in your desired playing style,” he said a few years ago.

For example, when Tyrell Malacia left last summer for Manchester United, he chose to replace him at left-back with the 20-year-old youth team product Quilindschy Hartman. When he needed a central midfielder, he took 22-year-old Mats Wieffer from Excelsior Rotterdam in the Dutch second tier. Both were subsequently called up to the Dutch national team. Most of the key players this season are 24 and under — there are only three outfielders in the squad who are older than 25. Most of all, the priority is on entertaining football. The goal is not to win at any cost, but to provide exciting, as well as winning, football. Voetbal International wrote: “He believes that special football is more remembered than a prize with boring, uninspiring football.”

Players seem to adore Slot.

Oussama Idrissi, who has been a key part of Slot’s teams at both AZ and Feyenoord, was asked recently by the Dutch newspaper AD where Slot ranks in the coaches he has played under. “For me, he’s the best,” said the Moroccan winger. “He can develop players and make teams play fun football.”

When it was pointed out that he has also played under Julen Lopetegui, Herve Renard and a guy called Erik ten Hag, Idrissi reiterated: “Slot was the best.”

You will not struggle to find other players with similarly effusive things to say about him. “He is one of the best managers I’ve ever seen,” said Alireza Jahanbakhsh, the Iranian forward currently playing under Slot at Feyenoord. “In football terms, even the best. At the moment, he is the best in the Netherlands.”

Reiss Nelson spent last season on loan at Feyenoord, becoming a regular in the second half of the campaign. “Arne Slot is a great manager,” he told the Colney Carpool podcast. “He really got me into my rhythm. He gave me a lot of opportunities to play and I excelled.”

“It’s a shame,” said Myron Boadu, shortly after Slot left AZ. “Arne is a fantastic person and a fantastic trainer who really let us play football in the style of Manchester City or Barcelona in the good times.”

“He’s as honest as possible, so the players really like him,” says De Graaf. Slot has not gained the backing of these players just by being straightforward, though. The players like him because they win under him. But, perhaps more than that, they follow him because most of the things he tells them come true.

“Before the game against Marseille (in the Europa Conference League) last season, during training he told his midfielders to play long balls out to the wingers, over the top,” explains Krabbendam. “(Orkun) Kokcu, the midfielder, was so tired of it — he asked: ‘Why do we have to keep playing these long balls?’. Slot said he would explain later.

“In 20 minutes, Feyenoord were up 2-0 and both goals came from long balls behind the Marseille defence. He knew that was a weakness of Marseille. If you speak to the Feyenoord players — and it doesn’t matter which players — they will tell you that whatever this coach says, it happens. It’s remarkable. They have blind confidence in him because what he says comes true.”

He is no hardliner or a particular disciplinarian. He emphasises positivity. When his video analysts put selections of clips together for players to watch, allowing them to scrutinise their own performances, he asks that most of them are positive. In particular, the last one is always positive so the players leave their session feeling good about themselves.

Arguably, the player who has most benefitted from Slot’s tenure at Feyenoord has been Kokcu, who came through the ranks at Feyenoord.
Previously regarded as a talented but slightly insubstantial No 10, Kokcu came back from Euro 2020 with Turkey to find things had changed. No longer would he be able to create and let his team-mates do his running for him.

After Slot’s first competitive game in charge, a Europa Conference League game against Kosovan side SF Drita, the new coach sat down next to Kokcu on the flight home and explained that he needed more from him. More running, more pressing, more chasing back. And it worked.

Even after only a few weeks of working together, Slot convinced Kokcu that he had to significantly improve physically.

Kokcu is close friends with Malacia (the two came through the Feyenoord youth team together) and had observed the defender’s physical development since he started working with a physical trainer in Rotterdam. Kokcu went to the same trainer and, within weeks, had become the worker Slot demanded.

“If you see him now, he’s a modern midfield player,” says Krabbendam.

To illustrate this point, take a look at this touch chart for Kokcu in Feyenoord’s Europa League quarter-final first-leg victory over Roma in April. The concentration is in the middle, but there are very few areas of the pitch he did not cover.
The disruption to football caused by COVID-19 produced many ‘what ifs’, but there cannot be many bigger than for Slot.

In his first season as AZ head coach, they had already beaten Feyenoord and PSV 3-0 and 4-0 away respectively before a 2-0 win at Ajax in March 2020 put them level on points at the top of the Eredivisie with the Amsterdam giants. There were still nine games remaining but AZ had the momentum.

The following week, the season was suspended as the pandemic took hold. The campaign was ultimately cancelled completely in April and the chance to win just the third title in AZ’s history was scuppered.

They started the following season in similar style, going undefeated until the start of December. Then it all ended quite abruptly.

Feyenoord announced that veteran manager Advocaat would be leaving at the end of that campaign. Slot was the obvious replacement but, a few days later, the AZ board got wind of talks between Slot and the Rotterdam club and promptly sacked him. He was clearly ready for a step up, but it was far from the way he wanted to leave the club.

“You always want to leave by the front door,” says Van den Brom. “So it wasn’t good for Arne and it wasn’t good for the club.”

He spent the intervening months playing golf and planning for the move.

And boy did those plans work. The improvement in Feyenoord’s football — and results — was almost instant, moving from a distant fifth to a closer third, scoring more goals, conceding fewer and winning more games. They also reached the Europa Conference League final, where they lost to Roma. Slot won the Rinus Michels award for best coach in the Eredivisie If you want to quantify Feyenoord’s improvement under Slot, consider FiveThirtyEight’s Soccer Power Index (above), which uses underlying metrics to calculate a team’s attacking and defensive strength. Slot’s arrival at the club coincided with a steady rise up the rankings. They are now on a score of 76.6, the 21st-highest in world football. Not bad for an Eredivisie club.

But here is perhaps the most compelling evidence that Slot has something.

In the summer after that first season, his Feyenoord team was gutted. Top-scorer Luis Sinisterra was sold to Leeds. Malacia went to United. Marcos Senesi to Bournemouth. Nelson’s loan spell ended and he returned to Arsenal. Midfielder Fredrik Aursnes joined Benfica. Guus Til (on loan at Feyenoord) moved to PSV. All four players who had chalked up double-figure goal tallies the previous season had left.

Of the team that started that Conference League final under a year ago, only four remain at the club.

And yet, Feyenoord improved. Kokcu and a few others stayed, but in came Santiago Gimenez, who has gone on to be their top scorer. Slovakian defender David Hancko arrived from Sparta Prague and excelled. Idrissi, who starred for Slot at AZ, was rescued from Sevilla on loan. Wieffer and Hartman were essentially plucked from nowhere and are now full internationals.

Click to expand...

Now they are champions. Despite being one of the ‘big three’ Dutch clubs, alongside Ajax and PSV, Feyenoord’s recent trophy count is relatively modest. Before this season, they had only won the Eredivisie once since the turn of the century, so this success shouldn’t be underestimated.

Click to expand...

What next for Arne Slot?

That has yet to be decided, but any club that wants a young, forward-thinking coach who prioritises fast, intense, attacking football would be foolish not to take a look.

Click to expand...

Albertbarich said:

Trust doesn't really come into my thinking.

He is going to or has interviewed people for the role, what I'm hoping for is the one he chooses is charismatic enough to hold his and Munns ear over the board members who should have nothing to do with football.

That right person's main talent maybe telling people what they want to hear so for all I care he could lie his way through the interview as long as once in post he is strong enough to push through a footballing led vision over a money led one.

Click to expand...

Russ1201 said:

Totqlly agree was just joking.

Click to expand...