James Pearce

speaker

466 appearances 4 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 16 Sep

James Pearce’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.

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The Athletic FC Podcast · Will Champions League save Slot at Liverpool? · 26 May 2026 podcast

So I do have sympathy for slot on that front.

I know people have said, well, Klopp would have dealt with it differently.

Klopp, the Dutch are a bit blunt and Klopp being more of a man manager would have found a way to kind of keep things...

you know, on the down low more, but I'm not sure about that.

I think you only have to go back to the end of Klopp's reign to see that, you know, him and Salah didn't exactly see eye to eye then.

And that was around the fact that Salah had been left out of a game down at West Ham.

So I think whichever Liverpool, whoever was in charge when the time came to decide, right, Salah is now no longer the first name on the team sheet.

I think that was going to be an incredibly difficult thing to deal with.

And when I speak to people internally about what's happened there this season, they kind of make the point that you can't really have it both ways because the reason why Salah was able to be this absolute machine that barely missed a game, registered mind-blowing numbers of goals and assists year after year after year,

is this, you know, like this drive and belief that he is the best player in the world.

And I think when things start to go badly, the flip side of that is probably not being able to take a step back and go, well, actually, yeah, I'm not still doing it.

Because I think the problem was he probably still thought he was up there with the greatest players in the world when unfortunately the evidence was to the contrary.

Yeah, I mean, it's very difficult to judge that, isn't it?

I think you can only, it felt to me like Wurz was being genuine in the same way as I thought he was being genuine when I asked him about Salah's social media post.

He was one of the players that liked it.

And I said to him, you know, do you realise that the perception outside the club is that by you liking it,

that was somehow you siding with Salah against slot because you know that is the way it's been interpreted and he was like no no no nothing like that he said you know I read it as Mo Salah saying this season has not been acceptable this is not the Liverpool level this is not what we expect it has to be better and he said you know I liked it because I completely agree with him he said you know I didn't I didn't see it as somehow against the manager and

So, yeah, I think, you know, Wurz is someone as well who's come in for a lot of criticism this season.

But I just think as well, he's the kind of player that I think we will see him flourish to a much bigger degree when there's more stability around him in the team, because it's been such a difficult environment to come in and

and really shine in this season.

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