If Arne Slot is as smart as plenty of people insist, then the uncomfortable question becomes pretty simple: why has he stuck with a system that’s clearly not landing?
I can accept the argument that managers need time, that new ideas take repetition, and that certain roles need the right profile of player. Football isn’t plug-and-play. But there’s a difference between persistence and digging your heels in while everything around you screams for a tweak.
Smart managers still have blind spots
Being clever doesn’t automatically mean being flexible. In fact, sometimes it’s the opposite. You back your model, you convince yourself it’ll come good, and you keep pushing the same buttons because the theory says it should work.
But matches aren’t theory. They’re tempo, second balls, timings, players’ habits under pressure. If the midfield is getting pulled apart, or if the press isn’t connected, you don’t get to mark it down as “nearly there” for months on end. You either coach the connections quicker, or you simplify it until it stops hurting you.
That’s the bit I can’t square. If the issue is just that we’re missing a proper ball-winning, tackling type in the middle, then why not tailor the system to the squad you’ve actually got? Or at least pause the most risky parts of it until the team look synchronised.
It’s the insistence that worries me
There’s a line in all this where the football stops being a rough patch and starts feeling… unwatchable. Not because you lose a game, but because you can see the same problems repeating, the same spaces opening, the same cheap transitions, and the same reluctance to adjust.
That’s what eats away at trust. Not one bad result. Not a dodgy spell. It’s the sense that the manager is determined to play a specific way even if it turns a winning side into a struggling one.
And once you’ve seen that, it’s hard to unsee it. You start thinking: if he’s willing to force his preferred style onto a team to the point it stops functioning, what’s to stop him doing it again the next time things are going well?
Even if it improves, the doubt lingers
Maybe Slot will pivot. Maybe he’ll find a version of his approach that suits the squad and gets us back to actually playing football, rather than looking like we’re trying to solve a puzzle every time we have the ball.
But the doubt lingers because the warning signs have been there and he’s kept going anyway. At this level you need ideas, yes. You also need judgement. When to insist. When to protect the team. When to meet the players where they are rather than where your blueprint says they should be.
Right now, that balance feels off. And that’s why, even if we scrape through patches and the results pick up, I’m not sure the trust automatically comes back with it.
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