Gethin

I'll ignore the snide-as-f*** second half of the question and answer it seriously Firstly, Slot looks like a great manager - but this is the one thing I'm not sure of with him. Think I've covered all this in previous posts - but to reiterate: I'm puzzled why he hasn't made more use of players who've proved that they're good enough to play decent minutes for our first team. It's not like his system is that different to Jurgen's and they were good enough for him - so there's got to be another reason that I'm just not getting. When he joined it was said that he hardly rotated at Feyernoord. I don't think you can get away with that long term in the PL 'cos it's a much tougher league and expectations are higher at a club like ours. I think it's a discussion well worth having - 'cos the effects have manifested clearly in the last month in both the CL and League Cup final and I can't help think "what might have been" in both. it's not mattered in the PL as we were quick out of the blocks and none of our challengers managed to put a run together.. Hopefully he'll get players he trusts more in the summer so it won't be an issue next season. Throwing it back to you - why do you think he's not played the fringe players as much as he could have?

Think the only thing we agree on is the last paragraph The struggling the second half of the season is pretty obviously because the core 13-14 players he's using aren't in top condition 'cos they've been overused. A bunch of us have been calling that out as a potential problem since last year and unfortunately now it is. The players we're talking about here: Elliott, Quansah, Bradley (who was underused before he started getting injured), Endo and to an extent Chiesa and Tsimikas would have all been perfectly capable of *at least* doing 15-20 mins from the bench in more games than they have been, without affecting very much at all. I still think we'll win the league but you wonder how differently other things may have gone with less fatigue involved.

Strewth!

As I said in another post. The City charges are a huge elephant in the room here - the effect of that could be feck all - or it could have a massive effect on which players are available to sign

Not really no, Mainly 'cos I wrote, so it was well thought through and pretty much unarguable

Yeah, next season is gonna be really unpredictable until we start seeing what transfer business teams are doing.

Auntie / c**k / uncle Resting players was absolutely the right thing for that game and there was no way to predict that would happen. There's way too many variables in that 32 team format. We just got very unlucky there - but still could/should have gone through.

And whilst these things are always marginal, I disagree with you on that. With a bit more sensible use of players when the opportunity presented itself, the core squad might not be looking quite so leggy right now. For example we passed up on lots of opportunities to sub core players off when games were won - or change one or two of the starting lineup against some of the PL dross. Those are small changes that can have a bigger effect later in the season. Who knows what might have happened vs PSG and Newcastle in the cup final with our best players a bit fresher. We've had a great season, but you can't help thinking it could have been even better.

They've got way too many question marks hanging over the squad and manager, even if you ignore the elephant in the room that is the 115 charges

Absolutely no way you can say that with certainty at the moment.

This is possibly the least self-aware post in the history of the forum

Think you're underselling the amount of issues. Even assuming Mo and Virg stay, there's a lot of work with the squad required to get to 17-18 players that Arne trusts to play most games. Bringing in that amount of players will be difficult and disruptive. You'd certainly expect us to be up there next season but it's not gonna be easy

I see the nurse has f***ed up Murph's meds again

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And thinking more about this, I actually think having Trent in our back four took Slot slightly away from the system he's played in the past. What Trent offers made those compromises worthwhile, but if Trent leaves I think we'll see Arne going back to a more conventional style RB and replacing that creativity elsewhere in the team. It'll look very different and 25/26 might actually turn out to be Arne's season where he beds in a new system and we'll take a small step back for longer term gain.