Thread by @babuyagu

When I started working for a financial services company aged 18 I really struggled with managing problems and my work. It is another of those skills that would be useful to learn at school but we just never did.

I was lucky that I had some fantastic bosses who wanted to help me

https://twitter.com/Tactical_Times/status/1422557715604312067

grow rather than criticising me for being a fuck-up.

One of them taught me to categorise all my work that comes in and problems I need to solve into 4 simple categories.

Important & Urgent
Important but not Urgent
Urgent but not Important
Neither Urgent or Important

The reason is when we have a lot - or even too much - to think about we have a tendency to just treat things as 1s and 0s. Every piece of work and every problems is just 1. One of many.

This advice from one of my bosses just completely changed my life as I could apply it to

everything from how I managed my debts at the time, solving problems around the house, you name it. But you can also apply it to how a club is (or should be) approaching squad building.

Having a forward to deputise for Mane & Salah during AFCON isn't urgent. It is even debatable

whether or not is important. It likely coincides with the winter break and seems like it will maybe affect a few league games at most? Firmino, Jota + 1 (Minamino or Elliott?) would be fine for a few games.

Of course if (when) we sell Shaq or Origi then that likely opens up a

squad place for another forward and we likely sign someone to give us better depth there. But this definitely isn't urgent. Whether it happens today or the last day of the window makes minimal difference other than giving them an extra couple of weeks to settle.

In contrast, with all 3 senior central defenders being ruled out for the season with injury - and it being likely neither Gomez or Virg will be ready to start the season and/or play a high load of minutes early on - getting another CB was both urgent AND important.

The same approach can be used to assess replacing Gini. We currently have Fabinho, Thiago, Hendo, Jones, Keita, Ox, Milner, Elliott - all able to pick up minutes in midfield. That is good in terms of both quality and depth.

Of course, the concern is the ability of those players to stay fit and cover the huge amount of minutes Gini consistently played in our midfield - you need consistency in your spine.

That is important - but not urgent as we have plenty of players available now.

And this could be a problem that we can only solve when we get departures - again due to squad spaces. Unless we sign someone like Bellingham who wouldn't need a squad space due to his age - and would later only use up a HG space.

As fans - we see every hypothetical problem as both urgent and important with very little difference from one to the next. If the club has 5 problems to solve in a window and solves 4 - the one they didn't will always be treated like it was THE most urgent and important.

That is because as fans - our considerations in terms of squad building you can count on one hand.

Whereas Edwards, Klopp and the team have hundreds of things they are considering.

And I know people doubt this but everything looks simple from the outside looking in.

How many times in your work life have you been criticised for something by someone who didn't understand the complexity of the problem.

Or how many of you had a boss that would say 'how long will this take?' - and whatever answer you give they arbitrarily halve it?

You give an answer weighing up all the knowledge and experience of doing the job.

They halve it because they have no idea what it

entails - they just want it done.

#LFC fans on twitter have become the asshole middle managers who are arbitrarily rushing everything because they have no fucking idea what is going on.

Turns out it actually has a name. Cheers Bazz.

https://twitter.com/BazzOReilly/status/1422572479411785732

https://twitter.com/BrownGed/status/1422828068092141568