Our wide players aren’t doing him any favours and yet he refuses to bring Ngumoha on yet again.
Most of our players looked knackered at 75 mins but he didn’t change anything until 85.
I don’t care how ‘weak’ the bench looks. We have full international footballers who can run, and young international footballers who can run, yet we would rather run our best players into the ground than utilise the squad we do have.
He is simply not getting the best outcomes from the footballers at his disposal.
After a few weeks of boring solidity that left us unbeaten but not winning, he seems to have decided he has to go back to basketball matches as at least we won some of them early in the season and nobody complained they were bored.
Forget top 5. There is a very real chance we won’t finish top 10. 24pts from our last 20 league games. Does anyone really fancy us to beat Sunderland, West Ham and Forest in the next 3? What’s going to change to bring wins in all 3 matches? Even 7pts feels unlikely.
I have great sympathy for the profiles issue, and the fitness issues. I totally get he has been dealt a shitty hand this season and this was going to be tough after the summer tragedy.
None of that frankly justifies 24pts in 20 games. That’s worse than any run Brendan Rodgers ever had.
You have to use all the players at your disposal to maximise your chances of winning football matches. Treating multiple players like they only exist when you are in desperate panic mode is doing nobody any favours.
I agree on Ngumoha. I would’ve used him more often at this point. But regarding the rest of his options, I’m very much in the camp that lots of them simply aren’t good enough and I’ve got no major issue with him acting like that. He managed the same last season and won the league.
It’s a tough one. I think his job has been made really difficult for a number of reasons this term. He isn’t a miracle worker and I think most of his peers would’ve struggled for the same reasons he has. He’s clearly tried loads as you’ve pointed out in your comment.
People want change. But the biggest problem as far as I’m concerned — the squad — is the same as it was in October. No additions. It’s arguably worse because of the injuries. So is it really a surprise that we haven’t turned a corner yet?
Rio isn’t ready, and more importantly, he shouldn’t be part of the solution at all. Not because he lacks talent, but because if a 17-year-old winger is even in the conversation about fixing structural problems in February, something’s already gone badly wrong upstream.
That’s why I don’t buy the “why won’t Slot just use Ngumoha” line as some silver bullet from others. You can give him minutes here and there, fine. But relying on him for legs, chaos, or width is just exposing how thin the squad actually is. That’s not development — that’s desperation dressed up as optimism.
It’s not a surprise we haven’t turned a corner in terms of we aren’t suddenly going to start getting 2pts or more per game.
But 24pts out of 20 games Josh!
This squad is not that bad. It just isn’t. We can all except a bad season given what has happened, but this is shaping up to be worse than bad.
We are staring down the barrel of not even finishing in a European place at all. It’s a very real possibility unless something changes, but there is little reason to believe something will change.
We can’t just keep running the same 14-15 players into the ground.
I'm firmly in the same boat as you when it comes to 24 points from 20 games being terrible. There's no doubt about that. But for me, those lines are just too easy to push. I'm more interested in the why behind that fact. How do we explain the nosedive? I'm not much of a results guy.
Looking at the whole picture, I feel like there's lots of mitigating factors as to why Liverpool are in this position. Slot isn't blameless and his position is rightly under threat. He's attached to plenty of them. But it's really important that Liverpool weigh up whether there's more than what meets the eye in this case.
There's a chance Slot isn't entirely at fault but he's still worth sacking. There's also a chance he's been managing with his hands tied because of how the landscape surrounding him has shifted. Tons for the suits to consider.
I understand the anger — 24 points from 20 games is awful by any standard — but I think the argument falls apart when we say “this squad isn’t that bad” without defining how it’s meant to function.
On paper, it’s fine. In reality, it’s barely half a team. Liverpool are missing a right-back, a centre-back, a proper 6, a right winger and a left winger if you want a coherent XI. That’s not depth, that’s the entire structure. Without those roles, everything becomes compensatory: midfielders covering wide zones, defenders exposed in transition, forwards receiving the ball in harmless areas.
That’s why it feels like the same 14–15 players are being run into the ground. Not because Slot refuses to rotate, but because the alternatives don’t actually fix the shape, and neither does existing 14-15 anyway. Rotating players without fixing roles just gives you the same problems with different legs.
So yes, the results are unacceptable. But it’s not because this is a secretly terrible squad — it’s because it’s an incoherent one. Until the XI itself makes sense again, the points won’t either.
I get the anger — the results are brutal and the optics are awful — but I still think you’re folding outcome rage into process blame, and that’s where I disagree.
Yes, there are bodies on the bench. Yes, some of them can run. That doesn’t mean bringing them on improves your chances of winning. Running isn’t the problem. Structure is. Throwing Ngumoha or a tired international into a game where control is already hanging by a thread doesn’t fix width, rest defence, or press resistance — it usually just speeds the collapse up. Slot delaying changes isn’t negligence; it’s him trying not to blow up what little stability exists.
The “use the squad” argument sounds right but ignores drop-off. If you don’t trust the replacement to hold the level, rotating doesn’t raise your ceiling — it lowers it sooner. Subbing tired players for worse players doesn’t magically restore intensity. It just spreads the weakness around.
And the basketball point cuts both ways. He didn’t go back to chaos because he fancied it. He did it because boring control stopped delivering points. Low-event football only works if you can nick goals. When you can’t, you’re stuck choosing between slow death and high variance. Neither is good.
The 24 points in 20 games is grim, no doubt. But this isn’t a normal slump. It’s a season built on a wrecked pre-season, ageing pillars, mis-profiled replacements, and no reinforcement. Comparing it to Rodgers ignores the physical debt baked into this squad.
You’re right that things look bleak. But I don’t think Slot is refusing to maximise what he has. I think what he has is worse than people want to admit — and every lever he pulls connects to something loose.
"You have to use all the players at your disposal to maximise your chances of winning football matches. Treating multiple players like they only exist when you are in desperate panic mode is doing nobody any favours."
Nail on the head, Lad.
The footie is shite, but he's a 'nice fella'
The results are shite, but he's a 'nice fella'
It is the 'nice fella' I have as much a problem with as the shite footie and shite results.
I looked at the bench and I thought: "That isn't a bench, that's a shitlist."
This'll be me mansplaining what a shitlist* is, but for those new to the term, a shitlist isn't a list of people who ARE shit, but it is a list of people that the compiler treats as such. A personal blacklist in Ye Olde Englishe; a list of people held in contempt.
A 'nice fella' doesn't split the squad into players he deems worthy of playing for him, and puts the rest on his shitlist; a shitlist that now contains one Curtis Jones of L8.
The sooner he's gone the better. Every day he remains to stink the club out, the worse things are going to get. And I'm not talking about Curtis, though I fully expect him to leave in the summer and take his missus and kid** off to pastures new/sunny where he can be a mainstay of some continental midfield, as his skills merit.
* thanks to the great Karen Gwyer for introducing me to the term via her track 'Shitlist with Kid' on the US008 EP available in all good record shops about ten years ago.
** Shitlist with Kid. That's you now, Curtis. Much as it pains me to say it.
I HATED it when pundits claimed Klopp had dropped or benched somebody, as that is such an antiquated term for Premier League football at this time. Rotation is a requirement of the Premier League now and Slot has gotten paranoid about what is going on so he will only play 13-14 players and will not rotate to bring freshness in. This game was screaming for a controlled 4-3-1-2 with Salah and Hugo in front of Wirtz and Gakpo on the bench and Jones in the midfield. Instead we rolled out a very ineffective Gakpo and he and Ekitike kept running into the same spaces while we gave up a ton of control in the midfield. And you are right lots of dead legs and tired minds by the end of the game.
You can’t play a 4-3-1-2 without creative fullbacks. That shape lives and dies on width coming from deep. If your fullbacks aren’t natural creators — or at least reliable progression outlets — the system becomes a trap. You overload the middle, you box yourself in, and suddenly every exit pass is either vertical and forced or backwards and desperate. You’re not controlling the game, you’re containing it.
So in that context, Slot’s hesitation makes more sense. A narrow system with these fullbacks doesn’t just reduce threat — it actively removes your escape routes. Once fatigue hits, you’ve got nowhere to go. No overlaps to stretch the pitch, no switches that flip pressure, no wide release valve to reset the play. You end up circulating under stress until something breaks.
Which brings it back to the original problem. Rotation isn’t just about legs, and tactics aren’t just about diagrams. The profiles don’t line up. The squad isn’t built to rotate freely, it isn’t built to sustain narrow systems, and it isn’t built to generate width without wingers doing most of the heavy lifting, and our wingers are one of the weakest parts of the team.
So when Slot sticks with the same 13–14 players and avoids radical shape changes, it’s not cowardice. It’s constraint. He knows that once he goes narrow without creative fullbacks, he’s basically choosing to survive rather than to escape — and right now, even survival is costing too much energy.
Genuine question as I’m interested in your comments in this thread. If the team isn’t built for 4-3-1-2 and it seemingly isn’t built for 4-3-3. What was it built to do in your estimation?
I think recruitment underestimated Salah’s drop off and Gakpo’s contribution. Slot wanted to keep Diaz or at least have him replaced. It’s why Slot said this sometime ago:-
“Packing the team with midfielders is not something I am doing by choice,” he explained.
“I am doing it because certain players are not available and that is something that needs to be really clear.
“Because I am a manager now for six or seven years and I have always played with wingers and I have always changed my wingers with new wingers coming in.
“So I always have it 4-3-3 with real wingers and never 5-4-1 or 4-4-2 and I have adjusted it maybe four or five times in my career to bring in a midfielder as a winger because I thought the other team – when I was at different clubs to Liverpool – would have more quality than us so I wanted to make it more solid.”
I suppose my question is more what recruitment strategy was trying to achieve this season in terms of in game tactics. I have serious questions with the quality of our players analytics with regard to Gakpo and Salah to be honest.
(I get that Slot wants to play with wingers. I’m just perplexed by the recruitment strategy.)
I think the confusion comes from the fact that there are two versions of this season, and recruitment only really makes sense in one of them.
In the alternate reality, the strategy is fairly clear. Slot wants wingers. He wants width, isolation, 1v1s, and repeatable patterns out wide. Gakpo and Salah, on paper, kind of fit that if you squint at the analytics: ball security, shot volume, xG contribution, pressing events. Add Wirtz between the lines, keep the midfield functional, paper over the cracks, transition year, job done. You accept some inefficiency because the structure and fitness base carry you while you refine things.
But we’re not in that reality.
In our reality, pre-season was wrecked. The physical base never got built, the tactical habits never bedded in, and the squad never got stress-tested properly. That’s the killer. Without that foundation, you don’t get to validate your recruitment assumptions. You can’t means-test whether Gakpo actually works as a REAL winger in England. You can’t see whether Salah can still pin full-backs consistently. You can’t tell whether Slot’s pressing scheme holds up with these profiles. Everything becomes reactive.
And that’s where the analytics question bites. Gakpo and Salah both still look “fine” in the data, but the traits don’t translate anymore. They don’t stretch teams. They don’t scare full-backs into dropping five yards. They don’t force defensive lines to deform. So Slot ends up with wingers in name, but not in function. Which then breaks the rest of the system.
Recruitment assumed a controlled transition season. Instead, we got chaos. Once that happened, the strategy stopped making sense because it was built on conditions that no longer existed. The moment the fitness base went and injuries piled up, the squad needed margin-for-error profiles — pace, width, ball-winning — and instead it had finesse players who need structure to thrive.
So yeah, I’m with you. It’s not that Slot doesn’t want wingers. It’s that the club recruited as if time and stability were guaranteed. And once those disappeared, the entire logic collapsed. The plan wasn’t insane — it was just designed for a season we never actually got to live.
@Sherekhan Klopp no problem ever truly has one solution. While Slot is constrained because of the squad, he is far from blameless. On Twitter and here, you’ve pointed to a lack of pre-season causing the drop off in fitness levels, when in reality, we did see this last January. Slot himself accepted his players ran out of gas in March.
On his tactics, there is a continuous flaw in his pressing approach in both the high press and mid block. He tracks men over space (plenty of analysts have pointed this out including @Josh Williams), and this leads to chasms opening up if you can overload his double pivot. Maresca did this last October but we managed to win the game 2-1. Every team is doing this now in different ways. He acknowledged this even last year against Brighton, when he said he was unhappy the press was breached but his players made recovery runs and that was good.
Am I advocating for him to be sacked? No. But there is plenty for him to fix. And where I disagree with you is that this is: (1) All fixable in the market and (2) Has occurred this year due to the summer’s events. The suboptimal OOP is something Slot has brought from Feyenoord.
Yes, there was fatigue last year. Nobody’s denying that. But that was a low battery, not a dead one. You could still drive the car. It spluttered late in games, but it functioned. What happened this summer is that the one chance you get to recharge, recalibrate, and reinforce the system just… didn’t happen. And then the season started anyway.
That’s the difference. Last year’s drop-off was cumulative fatigue with a functioning base. This year is cumulative fatigue without a base at all. Missed pre-season doesn’t just mean “less fit” — it means poorer muscle conditioning, weaker repeat-sprint capacity, sloppier automatisms, and higher cognitive load in-game. Everything costs more energy. Every action is more expensive.
So when people say, “well it happened last January too,” they’re technically right and fundamentally wrong. The symptom existed. The context is completely different. It’s the difference between managing a known issue and compounding it by removing the only window you have to fix it.
Slot brought in a vehicle with a warning light on. Instead of servicing it, it got sent back out with the battery drained, the tyres half-inflated, and the sat-nav reset. And now everyone’s shocked it keeps stalling at minute 75.
Agreed, and I have endless sympathy for what he’s had to endure as a coach and human being over the summer and into this season. There’s no way to account for the impact of Jota’s loss on the squad and club as a whole. As a result, I’m willing to write this season off as a fan.
But if we have to plan adequately for next year, we have to be honest about the shortcomings of not just the Sporting Director and the players, but also the coach.
There are questions of the players and the hierarchy which you’ve already outlined in the past. But the questions I’m asking of Slot are:
Why did the players fall off last March when they had lower training loads and a less intense style?
Why does Slot not fix our press and mid block?
If a team is ultra-physical and plays a low block, what tools do we have at our disposal other than a moment of individual magic?
Players fell off because we used a very small cohort of players. And what’s insane is instead of then supplementing that cohort, we made it smaller.
It’s why Josh (and I) keep talking about squad balance. We sold our best pressers, our only true wide outlet and lost our best deep playmaker. And instead of replacing it in the aggregate, we kicked off a rebuild by purchasing the jewels before the crown, the furniture before the house. And that extends to teams with different style as well.
A key philosophy of Slot’s style is his 3rd man in midfield - a right back or left back inverting - so that one of the two in the pivot can make depth runs to support the 10 and the striker. Because there’s a central overload.
You then stretch the opposition by having wingers who isolate the opposition full backs. Creates space either centrally or out wide.
We saw this last season with both Szobo and Mac making deep runs, Gakpo making deep runs and Diaz / Salah providing the width - Diaz doing it once Gakpo went inside.
Our recruitment has broken the entire system, so what we had last year, we no longer have. What we have this year needs more pieces to function. It’s the most insanely obvious transition season capped off by insane extraneous circumstances.
When that kinda cocktail of chemicals happens, ends up being a nuclear bomb. So you’re right, they have to plan very clearly for the summer. We need centre backs, we need a 6, we need wingers. And the more regularly we skirt this AND we hold onto ageing players, the more problems we have.
Where I will disagree with you is a press can be coached. Yes, a Gakpo will never press like a Luis Diaz, and same with Ekitike and Nunez. But what are the intentions of the players and is it an ideas problem or an execution problem?
Regardless of our personnel, we concede the same goal again and again and again. Lack of reliable pressure on the ball + midfielders marking men, which leads to a deep run and a goal. This happened last season too, it is a structural flaw Arne Slot has not fixed.
The above is not about just our high press, but even after our press is breached, how secure do we look in the mid or low block? And those are coachable.
It’s very hard to coach a coherent high press without a fitness base, without a tactical base, without automatisms AND then without the correct profiles.
Even our low block, it’s disjointed because we’re constantly forcing square pegs into round holes due to the squad makeup. Let’s think on this.
At right back we’ve either had one of the two injury prone right backs who can’t build rhythm or Szoboszlai.
At 6, we have a guy who is an advanced 8 - that Slot retrofitted to great effect - who worked well when he had Trent doing his build up for him. The other 6, we have an advanced 8, who worked when Szobo was leading the press and left him to be a recycler. Not a tempo setter, a recycler, who made deep runs.
Take Trent out, take Szobo out, take Diaz out, suddenly it’s like taking the Kevlar off in a war zone. Doesn’t work. We look defenceless because we have the wrong profiles in the positions that require key cogs to work. And it all comes full circle.
We broke the system. It’s why when people say, ‘these are league winning players’. No. It was a League winning team. We dismantled the team, started building a new one, but are stuck in between the two teams. And that’s a hard place for anyone to be. Problems ARE coachable. But when the weight is this heavy? Falls. Slot isn’t Atlas. He doesn’t even need to shrug for things to fall apart. Same for the players. So many in decline, so many settling in, so many just plain wrong for the system. It’s a tough one.
I am dead sure that in two summers, by GW1 27/28, it’ll look absolutely fine. We’ll have round pegs in round holes. But until then? Transition time and somewhere there will be a shortcoming. We have to buckle up.
Next season will be more forgiving because we’ll have a summer to reset and plan properly. We’ll bring new players in. But by God, if we leave square pegs in extremely important round holes, we’ll still have problems.
RB. CB. DM. RM. LM. We have to sort.
I think it’s been a cruel season. Cruel to lose a player. Cruel to have dominos fall after. Compromised pre season. Lack of a coherent plan as a result. Under-conditioned players. Players the getting injured, reinjured and then fully injured. It’s been cruel. Nowhere as cruel as the family who has felt true loss, but yeah.
And the online fans make it no better. They fight each other endlessly. It’s exhausting. It’s what has made me dislike football more than any result or performance. The people have stunk. They’ve been indecent in a hard time, showing a complete lack of honour. But it is what it is. 21st century media.
As far as the pressing issue is concerned? We sold two of our best pressers, and the third died. We replaced them with players who aren’t high intensity pressers and still have Gakpo / Salah who barely press enough for one together.
Slot’s press was always more passive by comparison to other high pressing teams. But when you have no natural pressers? Even a more passive press looks fully DOA. What’s worse is even if we win a press right now? Our forward line isn’t fast enough to streak past.
It’s why the issue needs sorting in the market. We need fast, aggressive and creative wingers. And a 6 who’ll sit with Szobo whilst the front 4 go bonkers with Frimpong / Kerkez at FB.
Josh — hope you feel better for having written the article. It definitely helps make sense of the first half.
Candidly, I don’t think we deserved to lose. But we’re at a point where how people interpret the game depends on whether they’re looking at it from a half-full or half-empty perspective.
What concerns me more is the speed at which we conceded the two goals. We did well to keep our composure despite being outplayed in the first half, and it felt like our luck had turned after Ali’s walkabout early in the second half. But as soon as we conceded the first goal, our decision-making deteriorated rapidly.
As you say, there’s clear underlying improvement in how we’ve played over the past month. But psychologically, I think there are deeper issues we still haven’t resolved.
We've had one penalty this season, last season we got 9. A penalty is worth roughly a point. Against City we were denied a clear penalty with Salah getting pulled back in the act of shooting and a red card for Guehi's pull back (which also could have been a pen because it continued into the box). But we haven't had a single DOAGSO at Anfield go for us in over 12 years (although we've had several given against us.
Both Guardiola and Rodri had well reported complaint about the standard of referring in the press recently and unsurprisingly the big decisions went there way.
Now I've got no problem with the pen we conceded but would the game state have been the same if we'd been awarded the correct decisions.
We've got 3 natural RBs out injured - Dom did a great job but I suspect if one of the specialists had been playing he wouldn't Silva onside for the equaliser.
Hugo is great up top but he's still building his fitness and adjusting to the intensity of the PL without our other no 9 able to help manage his minutes.
Rio is too young and too vulnerable to injury, look at all the growing pains our young players have suffered with age and growth related injuries. He needs to be protected.
Slot's management of his squad and bench is a true concern. Last season, even when winning, he largely beasted the same core group of players. This season the same, even when they look knackered. Its as if truly doesn't trust or rate many players the club owns.
But I don’t blame him. Endo isn’t much of an option anymore. Like, come on. Rio, I would’ve used more, but he’s barely old enough to drive so I kinda get it. Robertson is fine, but Kerkez is doing well lately.
Jones is the one who I would’ve used earlier on the weekend. But right now, we don’t have much else.
This is the thing. We have 6 ‘top players’ who will approach their prime. Ibou, Kerkez, Szobo, Grav, Wirtz, Ekitike. But Szobo / Grav cancel each other out in midfield. So it’s really 5 in a lineup. That means we’re short 6 in the lineup alone, never mind the squad. That’s an awful state of affairs.
We’ve basically done the thing we never wanted to do. We’ve let and are letting players legs go on our watch. We need to get this rebuild VERY right. This summer and the next. Or that is when the problems really start.
I agree that Slots squad management is a true concern. Agree also that chiesa, endo etc are not at the same level as the starters. A good manager makes the most of what they have. I still believe 100% endo at 75min is better than a 10% Macca. Slot not only does he stick with the players he trusts until they are completely empty but also demotivates the squad players by making sure they know he does not count on them eg. with his press conferences. Your squad players need to believe that they have the opportunity to be in the first team so that they are ready when circumstances require them to play, Klopp was excellent at that. In my opinion this is a big red flag for Slot. You can’t compete in multiple fronts with 11-13 players, you need a full squad and it seems Slot is incapable of managing that.
Josh, I think you’re right on most of the what, but I’m still not convinced by the why you’re landing on.
Pep didn’t really spring some unknowable trap here. He just leaned into a weakness that’s been staring us in the face for months. Pulling Semenyo inside and dragging Virgil wide only becomes a problem because there’s no punishment due from our wingers. No one pins full-backs. No one forces City to drop five yards. So of course Pep overloads the middle. That’s not Slot being outfoxed — it’s Slot being short of profiles.
The long-ball, transition-heavy first half was ugly, no doubt. But I don’t think it was some philosophical failure or Slot losing his nerve. It felt more like an admission: trying to dominate City centrally with this midfield and these wide options would’ve been suicide. So he rolled the dice on variance instead. Not pretty, but I’m genuinely struggling to see the clean alternative he ignored in that moment.
And honestly, the second half kind of gives the whole game away. Once the surprise wore off and Liverpool settled, we were the better side. Not dominant, but competitive. We moved the ball quicker, played through the thirds, Kerkez stopped hesitating, Virgil stepped back into control. City weren’t carving us open anymore. We created chances and pushed them back. That doesn’t happen if the setup is fundamentally broken.
Then the same thing happened. Again. Around the 70–75 minute mark, the legs just went. Not a tactical choice. Not a conscious decision to drop deep. Just physical drop-off. Pressing turned into half-pressing. Recovery runs slowed. Distances stretched. And once you start defending space instead of players against City, you’re basically on borrowed time.
The goals themselves were pure season-in-microcosm stuff. A ridiculous free-kick. A messy equaliser born of a Virgil error in judgement and a makeshift right-back losing his line. An Alisson error you see once every few seasons. Thin margins biting because there’s no buffer in the squad.
Where I’m with you is on drift. Slot can’t let this season just fade into beige misery, fair or not. League form hardens narratives quickly. But I don’t think this is about him failing to “get” the Premier League. Europe tells a different story. England just exposes you harder when you’re missing pace, width, and a proper transition killer.
So yeah, I get the frustration. I share it. I just think that second half actually argues against this being a coaching collapse. The plan worked. The bodies didn’t.
I kinda disagree on the unknowable trap thing. I don’t think Slot saw the diamond coming. So Liverpool needed time to figure out what was happening. And once doing so, they needed to get that message to Kerkez while the match was playing out. Nightmare.
So regardless of profiles, the diamond curveball gave City a strategic edge for half an hour or so. Once Liverpool sorted that out, I’d argue they competed pretty well.
I agree that he didn’t see it coming and definitely gave Pep an edge. But Pep did it KNOWING we don’t have the profiles to get out of said trap.
Put fast wingers out wide? Suddenly we’re playing balls over their press and beyond their full backs. Diamond shatters. Plan would have to change.
Essentially Pep knew we had no get out clause. What Slot changed in the second half was smart. But the issue is that we don’t have the personnel to sustain it. So we did it for 30, then collapsed. Even if we had Curtis on, we’re not sustaining an M2M for the remaining 25 mins of the game.
The “this squad is too talented for this” line only works until you actually look at it properly. You’ve got four core players - Ali, Virgil, Mac, Salah - in clear physical or athletic decline. Still good footballers, still useful in spells, but no longer capable of carrying games week after week in England. You can manage one, maybe two. Four is structural. Add in a starter who shouldn’t really be starting right now - Gakpo - and suddenly you’re asking five genuinely fine players to carry six who can’t. That’s not underperformance — that’s maths.
On top of that, the fitness piece can’t be ignored. This team isn’t fading because the ideas are wrong or because players have forgotten how to play. They’re fading because the physical and tactical base was never properly laid in pre-season. Once that’s missing, everything costs more energy than it should. Pressing takes longer, recovery runs arrive late, and the ball moves that half-second slower. The plan can still look fine, but when the legs go, the structure leaks, and games turn into endurance tests you keep losing late on.
Then there’s profiling, which is where England really exposes you. This squad lacks proper wingers who stretch games and force full-backs to defend space, and it lacks a true deep playmaker who can speed the game up when legs are heavy and slow it down when chaos hits. Without width, without direct runners, and without someone who can consistently reset possession and kill transitions, even very good players end up looking blunt and leggy. The quality is there. The balance isn’t.
I am very much in agreement with you, but I am also in agreement with Simon's comment that this just cannot happen with a team with this talent level. I think ultimately your most prescient comment is "England just exposes you harder when you’re missing pace, width, and a proper transition killer." This team lacks both the general pace of a direct runner but also the pace in passing that we saw last year. Everything feels slow!
Guardiola had tears in his eyes at the end of the match, went over to the away fans and was very much soaking it in. Did we see his last game at Anfield?
I think this match, being against our recent rivals the last 10 years, has everyone in an emotional flop. But actually it doesn’t mean a whole lot at all - transition season for both teams, neither of whom are likely to win the league at this point which is a big change from recent years.
In the context of chasing top 5 (alongside equally inconsitent teams in Villa/utd/chelsea), we aren’t all that worse off. city/arsenal will beat most of them when they play them, and they all still have to play each other. Funnily, our last 4 games are against those 3 sides and the other is brentford (who we are on equal pts with haha). There will be a scrap but I don’t see anyone waltzing into third and I think our chances for top 5 are still v strong.
The 24 from 20 looks and sounds awful, but as you rightly continuously point out, there are so many factors at play, the biggest of which is a grossly unbalanced squad. And if you look at the closer details you see how fine the margins have been across those 20 games.
People who start comparing runs to Hodgson and Rodgers etc can jog on. The league is not what it was 5 years ago, never mind 10/15/20.
I think everyone needs to dust themselves down, get focused on the weekend, bring some positivity.
Thoroughly agree with the wingers comment. The team were completely boxed in the first half and Pep had nullified the use of Wirtz with the crowding of the midfield, we didn’t have a single out to use on the counter attack to bring us up the pitch from the wings. I remember vividly when Diaz took on walker a couple of seasons ago and dragged us up the pitch on his own. I struggle to see how a new manager will suddenly reap the rewards of this current crop of players. If slot has wingers such as Yan Diomande and Bazoumana Toure (realistic targets imo) either side you’d see a much better team. Team is crying out for some pace and 1 v 1 ability. Only ones with those traits at the moment I can think of is Ekitike and Frimpong.
There's been plenty of criticism around squad management, misprofiling, and Slot being a poor tactician. To be honest, there's truth in most of it—but one thing I can't stop thinking about is intelligence.
I don't think we have intelligent players who can make good decisions at least eight times out of ten, particularly the wingers and midfielders. Take Gakpo, for example. He held onto the ball far too often when a simple pass to the fullback or Wirtz could have improved the play.
Gravenberch as well—he didn't know when to run, pass, mark, or even duel properly. Then you have Salah taking too many touches and struggling to control the ball. And Alisson with his blunder. I could go on, but I'll stop here.
My point is this: when too many players make poor decisions, you'll always fall short. I'd argue that with a few good decisions, we would have won the game. But winning is just three points—it would mask the other problems we have in the squad.
As I mentioned two weeks ago, we didn't build a balanced squad, and we're reaping the rewards now. Even if you brought in a new coach with 13 PL games left, plus a possible UCL and FA Cup run, it wouldn't do anything tangible because the damage has been done. That's why the suits are okay with throwing away the season and resetting in the summer.
It's painful to watch and analyse every time, but it is what it is. We just have to see it out now.
Earlier this year Josh was mentioned he felt (maybe hoped) this would not be a repeat of 2014-15 when Rodgers was throwing everything against the wall tactically to see if it stuck - one week Sterling's a striker the next he's a wingback in a back 5, Emre Can an overhead kick scoring 10 one week and a right-sided centerback in a back 3 the next.
However, as Slot still refuses to expand his use of the squad and keeps throwing new tactics out there, I am starting to get scared he is much more of a Rodgers than a Klopp. A really good manager that is great in mid-sized leagues, but struggles under intensely bright lights of a world heavyweight. His press conferences just have a very Brendan feel to them now! Both rode a forward having one of the greatest seasons in Premier League history to great heights, both seem to struggle to generate any offense without that player carrying them.
It is a weird place to be contemplating whether your manager should be fired when you are one of the favorites to win the Champions League. At the same time though, the EPL table since January 1 shows that Man United and Chelsea are first and second after changing managers with 14 and 13 points. Liverpool sit in 15th in that table with just 7 points since the new year. Even if you push back to since December 1 to include the "unbeaten" run, Liverpool would only be 9th with 18 points in the last 12 match rounds. So, there are not a lot of trends there to make one optimistic.
I know there has been a lot of weird bad luck this year, but at some point Slot is just going to have ignore everything and just make this team go grind out some wins. If he cannot do that in the next month, I don't know that he is that guy for the next couple of years.
He hasn’t been trying new tactics just to see what sticks. He’s been changing tactics because players keep dropping like flies. One minute it’s Frimpong, then Gakpo, then Bradley, then Ekitike, then someone else, then someone else. Slot isn’t Rogers. He’s a multi-League winner, and won WITH Liverpool.
People have been very unforgiving this season, during a time that’s probably the hardest at the club in decades. It’s as far away from singing ‘you’ll never walk alone’ as it can get. If anyone is making this season even more grim? It’s the fans. Just fighting each other all day.
I don’t disagree, but you could argue City barely turned up for the second 45. And only ended up winning the game because we ceded all sense of control.
Our wide players aren’t doing him any favours and yet he refuses to bring Ngumoha on yet again.
Most of our players looked knackered at 75 mins but he didn’t change anything until 85.
I don’t care how ‘weak’ the bench looks. We have full international footballers who can run, and young international footballers who can run, yet we would rather run our best players into the ground than utilise the squad we do have.
He is simply not getting the best outcomes from the footballers at his disposal.
After a few weeks of boring solidity that left us unbeaten but not winning, he seems to have decided he has to go back to basketball matches as at least we won some of them early in the season and nobody complained they were bored.
Forget top 5. There is a very real chance we won’t finish top 10. 24pts from our last 20 league games. Does anyone really fancy us to beat Sunderland, West Ham and Forest in the next 3? What’s going to change to bring wins in all 3 matches? Even 7pts feels unlikely.
I have great sympathy for the profiles issue, and the fitness issues. I totally get he has been dealt a shitty hand this season and this was going to be tough after the summer tragedy.
None of that frankly justifies 24pts in 20 games. That’s worse than any run Brendan Rodgers ever had.
You have to use all the players at your disposal to maximise your chances of winning football matches. Treating multiple players like they only exist when you are in desperate panic mode is doing nobody any favours.
I agree on Ngumoha. I would’ve used him more often at this point. But regarding the rest of his options, I’m very much in the camp that lots of them simply aren’t good enough and I’ve got no major issue with him acting like that. He managed the same last season and won the league.
It’s a tough one. I think his job has been made really difficult for a number of reasons this term. He isn’t a miracle worker and I think most of his peers would’ve struggled for the same reasons he has. He’s clearly tried loads as you’ve pointed out in your comment.
People want change. But the biggest problem as far as I’m concerned — the squad — is the same as it was in October. No additions. It’s arguably worse because of the injuries. So is it really a surprise that we haven’t turned a corner yet?
Rio isn’t ready, and more importantly, he shouldn’t be part of the solution at all. Not because he lacks talent, but because if a 17-year-old winger is even in the conversation about fixing structural problems in February, something’s already gone badly wrong upstream.
That’s why I don’t buy the “why won’t Slot just use Ngumoha” line as some silver bullet from others. You can give him minutes here and there, fine. But relying on him for legs, chaos, or width is just exposing how thin the squad actually is. That’s not development — that’s desperation dressed up as optimism.
It’s not a surprise we haven’t turned a corner in terms of we aren’t suddenly going to start getting 2pts or more per game.
But 24pts out of 20 games Josh!
This squad is not that bad. It just isn’t. We can all except a bad season given what has happened, but this is shaping up to be worse than bad.
We are staring down the barrel of not even finishing in a European place at all. It’s a very real possibility unless something changes, but there is little reason to believe something will change.
We can’t just keep running the same 14-15 players into the ground.
I'm firmly in the same boat as you when it comes to 24 points from 20 games being terrible. There's no doubt about that. But for me, those lines are just too easy to push. I'm more interested in the why behind that fact. How do we explain the nosedive? I'm not much of a results guy.
Looking at the whole picture, I feel like there's lots of mitigating factors as to why Liverpool are in this position. Slot isn't blameless and his position is rightly under threat. He's attached to plenty of them. But it's really important that Liverpool weigh up whether there's more than what meets the eye in this case.
There's a chance Slot isn't entirely at fault but he's still worth sacking. There's also a chance he's been managing with his hands tied because of how the landscape surrounding him has shifted. Tons for the suits to consider.
I understand the anger — 24 points from 20 games is awful by any standard — but I think the argument falls apart when we say “this squad isn’t that bad” without defining how it’s meant to function.
On paper, it’s fine. In reality, it’s barely half a team. Liverpool are missing a right-back, a centre-back, a proper 6, a right winger and a left winger if you want a coherent XI. That’s not depth, that’s the entire structure. Without those roles, everything becomes compensatory: midfielders covering wide zones, defenders exposed in transition, forwards receiving the ball in harmless areas.
That’s why it feels like the same 14–15 players are being run into the ground. Not because Slot refuses to rotate, but because the alternatives don’t actually fix the shape, and neither does existing 14-15 anyway. Rotating players without fixing roles just gives you the same problems with different legs.
So yes, the results are unacceptable. But it’s not because this is a secretly terrible squad — it’s because it’s an incoherent one. Until the XI itself makes sense again, the points won’t either.
On the money
I get the anger — the results are brutal and the optics are awful — but I still think you’re folding outcome rage into process blame, and that’s where I disagree.
Yes, there are bodies on the bench. Yes, some of them can run. That doesn’t mean bringing them on improves your chances of winning. Running isn’t the problem. Structure is. Throwing Ngumoha or a tired international into a game where control is already hanging by a thread doesn’t fix width, rest defence, or press resistance — it usually just speeds the collapse up. Slot delaying changes isn’t negligence; it’s him trying not to blow up what little stability exists.
The “use the squad” argument sounds right but ignores drop-off. If you don’t trust the replacement to hold the level, rotating doesn’t raise your ceiling — it lowers it sooner. Subbing tired players for worse players doesn’t magically restore intensity. It just spreads the weakness around.
And the basketball point cuts both ways. He didn’t go back to chaos because he fancied it. He did it because boring control stopped delivering points. Low-event football only works if you can nick goals. When you can’t, you’re stuck choosing between slow death and high variance. Neither is good.
The 24 points in 20 games is grim, no doubt. But this isn’t a normal slump. It’s a season built on a wrecked pre-season, ageing pillars, mis-profiled replacements, and no reinforcement. Comparing it to Rodgers ignores the physical debt baked into this squad.
You’re right that things look bleak. But I don’t think Slot is refusing to maximise what he has. I think what he has is worse than people want to admit — and every lever he pulls connects to something loose.
"You have to use all the players at your disposal to maximise your chances of winning football matches. Treating multiple players like they only exist when you are in desperate panic mode is doing nobody any favours."
Nail on the head, Lad.
The footie is shite, but he's a 'nice fella'
The results are shite, but he's a 'nice fella'
It is the 'nice fella' I have as much a problem with as the shite footie and shite results.
I looked at the bench and I thought: "That isn't a bench, that's a shitlist."
This'll be me mansplaining what a shitlist* is, but for those new to the term, a shitlist isn't a list of people who ARE shit, but it is a list of people that the compiler treats as such. A personal blacklist in Ye Olde Englishe; a list of people held in contempt.
A 'nice fella' doesn't split the squad into players he deems worthy of playing for him, and puts the rest on his shitlist; a shitlist that now contains one Curtis Jones of L8.
The sooner he's gone the better. Every day he remains to stink the club out, the worse things are going to get. And I'm not talking about Curtis, though I fully expect him to leave in the summer and take his missus and kid** off to pastures new/sunny where he can be a mainstay of some continental midfield, as his skills merit.
* thanks to the great Karen Gwyer for introducing me to the term via her track 'Shitlist with Kid' on the US008 EP available in all good record shops about ten years ago.
** Shitlist with Kid. That's you now, Curtis. Much as it pains me to say it.
I HATED it when pundits claimed Klopp had dropped or benched somebody, as that is such an antiquated term for Premier League football at this time. Rotation is a requirement of the Premier League now and Slot has gotten paranoid about what is going on so he will only play 13-14 players and will not rotate to bring freshness in. This game was screaming for a controlled 4-3-1-2 with Salah and Hugo in front of Wirtz and Gakpo on the bench and Jones in the midfield. Instead we rolled out a very ineffective Gakpo and he and Ekitike kept running into the same spaces while we gave up a ton of control in the midfield. And you are right lots of dead legs and tired minds by the end of the game.
You can’t play a 4-3-1-2 without creative fullbacks. That shape lives and dies on width coming from deep. If your fullbacks aren’t natural creators — or at least reliable progression outlets — the system becomes a trap. You overload the middle, you box yourself in, and suddenly every exit pass is either vertical and forced or backwards and desperate. You’re not controlling the game, you’re containing it.
So in that context, Slot’s hesitation makes more sense. A narrow system with these fullbacks doesn’t just reduce threat — it actively removes your escape routes. Once fatigue hits, you’ve got nowhere to go. No overlaps to stretch the pitch, no switches that flip pressure, no wide release valve to reset the play. You end up circulating under stress until something breaks.
Which brings it back to the original problem. Rotation isn’t just about legs, and tactics aren’t just about diagrams. The profiles don’t line up. The squad isn’t built to rotate freely, it isn’t built to sustain narrow systems, and it isn’t built to generate width without wingers doing most of the heavy lifting, and our wingers are one of the weakest parts of the team.
So when Slot sticks with the same 13–14 players and avoids radical shape changes, it’s not cowardice. It’s constraint. He knows that once he goes narrow without creative fullbacks, he’s basically choosing to survive rather than to escape — and right now, even survival is costing too much energy.
Genuine question as I’m interested in your comments in this thread. If the team isn’t built for 4-3-1-2 and it seemingly isn’t built for 4-3-3. What was it built to do in your estimation?
I think recruitment underestimated Salah’s drop off and Gakpo’s contribution. Slot wanted to keep Diaz or at least have him replaced. It’s why Slot said this sometime ago:-
“Packing the team with midfielders is not something I am doing by choice,” he explained.
“I am doing it because certain players are not available and that is something that needs to be really clear.
“Because I am a manager now for six or seven years and I have always played with wingers and I have always changed my wingers with new wingers coming in.
“So I always have it 4-3-3 with real wingers and never 5-4-1 or 4-4-2 and I have adjusted it maybe four or five times in my career to bring in a midfielder as a winger because I thought the other team – when I was at different clubs to Liverpool – would have more quality than us so I wanted to make it more solid.”
REAL wingers. He didn’t get them.
I suppose my question is more what recruitment strategy was trying to achieve this season in terms of in game tactics. I have serious questions with the quality of our players analytics with regard to Gakpo and Salah to be honest.
(I get that Slot wants to play with wingers. I’m just perplexed by the recruitment strategy.)
I think the confusion comes from the fact that there are two versions of this season, and recruitment only really makes sense in one of them.
In the alternate reality, the strategy is fairly clear. Slot wants wingers. He wants width, isolation, 1v1s, and repeatable patterns out wide. Gakpo and Salah, on paper, kind of fit that if you squint at the analytics: ball security, shot volume, xG contribution, pressing events. Add Wirtz between the lines, keep the midfield functional, paper over the cracks, transition year, job done. You accept some inefficiency because the structure and fitness base carry you while you refine things.
But we’re not in that reality.
In our reality, pre-season was wrecked. The physical base never got built, the tactical habits never bedded in, and the squad never got stress-tested properly. That’s the killer. Without that foundation, you don’t get to validate your recruitment assumptions. You can’t means-test whether Gakpo actually works as a REAL winger in England. You can’t see whether Salah can still pin full-backs consistently. You can’t tell whether Slot’s pressing scheme holds up with these profiles. Everything becomes reactive.
And that’s where the analytics question bites. Gakpo and Salah both still look “fine” in the data, but the traits don’t translate anymore. They don’t stretch teams. They don’t scare full-backs into dropping five yards. They don’t force defensive lines to deform. So Slot ends up with wingers in name, but not in function. Which then breaks the rest of the system.
Recruitment assumed a controlled transition season. Instead, we got chaos. Once that happened, the strategy stopped making sense because it was built on conditions that no longer existed. The moment the fitness base went and injuries piled up, the squad needed margin-for-error profiles — pace, width, ball-winning — and instead it had finesse players who need structure to thrive.
So yeah, I’m with you. It’s not that Slot doesn’t want wingers. It’s that the club recruited as if time and stability were guaranteed. And once those disappeared, the entire logic collapsed. The plan wasn’t insane — it was just designed for a season we never actually got to live.
@Sherekhan Klopp no problem ever truly has one solution. While Slot is constrained because of the squad, he is far from blameless. On Twitter and here, you’ve pointed to a lack of pre-season causing the drop off in fitness levels, when in reality, we did see this last January. Slot himself accepted his players ran out of gas in March.
On his tactics, there is a continuous flaw in his pressing approach in both the high press and mid block. He tracks men over space (plenty of analysts have pointed this out including @Josh Williams), and this leads to chasms opening up if you can overload his double pivot. Maresca did this last October but we managed to win the game 2-1. Every team is doing this now in different ways. He acknowledged this even last year against Brighton, when he said he was unhappy the press was breached but his players made recovery runs and that was good.
Am I advocating for him to be sacked? No. But there is plenty for him to fix. And where I disagree with you is that this is: (1) All fixable in the market and (2) Has occurred this year due to the summer’s events. The suboptimal OOP is something Slot has brought from Feyenoord.
Yes, there was fatigue last year. Nobody’s denying that. But that was a low battery, not a dead one. You could still drive the car. It spluttered late in games, but it functioned. What happened this summer is that the one chance you get to recharge, recalibrate, and reinforce the system just… didn’t happen. And then the season started anyway.
That’s the difference. Last year’s drop-off was cumulative fatigue with a functioning base. This year is cumulative fatigue without a base at all. Missed pre-season doesn’t just mean “less fit” — it means poorer muscle conditioning, weaker repeat-sprint capacity, sloppier automatisms, and higher cognitive load in-game. Everything costs more energy. Every action is more expensive.
So when people say, “well it happened last January too,” they’re technically right and fundamentally wrong. The symptom existed. The context is completely different. It’s the difference between managing a known issue and compounding it by removing the only window you have to fix it.
Slot brought in a vehicle with a warning light on. Instead of servicing it, it got sent back out with the battery drained, the tyres half-inflated, and the sat-nav reset. And now everyone’s shocked it keeps stalling at minute 75.
Agreed, and I have endless sympathy for what he’s had to endure as a coach and human being over the summer and into this season. There’s no way to account for the impact of Jota’s loss on the squad and club as a whole. As a result, I’m willing to write this season off as a fan.
But if we have to plan adequately for next year, we have to be honest about the shortcomings of not just the Sporting Director and the players, but also the coach.
There are questions of the players and the hierarchy which you’ve already outlined in the past. But the questions I’m asking of Slot are:
Why did the players fall off last March when they had lower training loads and a less intense style?
Why does Slot not fix our press and mid block?
If a team is ultra-physical and plays a low block, what tools do we have at our disposal other than a moment of individual magic?
Players fell off because we used a very small cohort of players. And what’s insane is instead of then supplementing that cohort, we made it smaller.
It’s why Josh (and I) keep talking about squad balance. We sold our best pressers, our only true wide outlet and lost our best deep playmaker. And instead of replacing it in the aggregate, we kicked off a rebuild by purchasing the jewels before the crown, the furniture before the house. And that extends to teams with different style as well.
A key philosophy of Slot’s style is his 3rd man in midfield - a right back or left back inverting - so that one of the two in the pivot can make depth runs to support the 10 and the striker. Because there’s a central overload.
You then stretch the opposition by having wingers who isolate the opposition full backs. Creates space either centrally or out wide.
We saw this last season with both Szobo and Mac making deep runs, Gakpo making deep runs and Diaz / Salah providing the width - Diaz doing it once Gakpo went inside.
Our recruitment has broken the entire system, so what we had last year, we no longer have. What we have this year needs more pieces to function. It’s the most insanely obvious transition season capped off by insane extraneous circumstances.
When that kinda cocktail of chemicals happens, ends up being a nuclear bomb. So you’re right, they have to plan very clearly for the summer. We need centre backs, we need a 6, we need wingers. And the more regularly we skirt this AND we hold onto ageing players, the more problems we have.
Where I will disagree with you is a press can be coached. Yes, a Gakpo will never press like a Luis Diaz, and same with Ekitike and Nunez. But what are the intentions of the players and is it an ideas problem or an execution problem?
Regardless of our personnel, we concede the same goal again and again and again. Lack of reliable pressure on the ball + midfielders marking men, which leads to a deep run and a goal. This happened last season too, it is a structural flaw Arne Slot has not fixed.
The above is not about just our high press, but even after our press is breached, how secure do we look in the mid or low block? And those are coachable.
It’s very hard to coach a coherent high press without a fitness base, without a tactical base, without automatisms AND then without the correct profiles.
Even our low block, it’s disjointed because we’re constantly forcing square pegs into round holes due to the squad makeup. Let’s think on this.
At right back we’ve either had one of the two injury prone right backs who can’t build rhythm or Szoboszlai.
At 6, we have a guy who is an advanced 8 - that Slot retrofitted to great effect - who worked well when he had Trent doing his build up for him. The other 6, we have an advanced 8, who worked when Szobo was leading the press and left him to be a recycler. Not a tempo setter, a recycler, who made deep runs.
Take Trent out, take Szobo out, take Diaz out, suddenly it’s like taking the Kevlar off in a war zone. Doesn’t work. We look defenceless because we have the wrong profiles in the positions that require key cogs to work. And it all comes full circle.
We broke the system. It’s why when people say, ‘these are league winning players’. No. It was a League winning team. We dismantled the team, started building a new one, but are stuck in between the two teams. And that’s a hard place for anyone to be. Problems ARE coachable. But when the weight is this heavy? Falls. Slot isn’t Atlas. He doesn’t even need to shrug for things to fall apart. Same for the players. So many in decline, so many settling in, so many just plain wrong for the system. It’s a tough one.
I am dead sure that in two summers, by GW1 27/28, it’ll look absolutely fine. We’ll have round pegs in round holes. But until then? Transition time and somewhere there will be a shortcoming. We have to buckle up.
Next season will be more forgiving because we’ll have a summer to reset and plan properly. We’ll bring new players in. But by God, if we leave square pegs in extremely important round holes, we’ll still have problems.
RB. CB. DM. RM. LM. We have to sort.
I think it’s been a cruel season. Cruel to lose a player. Cruel to have dominos fall after. Compromised pre season. Lack of a coherent plan as a result. Under-conditioned players. Players the getting injured, reinjured and then fully injured. It’s been cruel. Nowhere as cruel as the family who has felt true loss, but yeah.
And the online fans make it no better. They fight each other endlessly. It’s exhausting. It’s what has made me dislike football more than any result or performance. The people have stunk. They’ve been indecent in a hard time, showing a complete lack of honour. But it is what it is. 21st century media.
As far as the pressing issue is concerned? We sold two of our best pressers, and the third died. We replaced them with players who aren’t high intensity pressers and still have Gakpo / Salah who barely press enough for one together.
Slot’s press was always more passive by comparison to other high pressing teams. But when you have no natural pressers? Even a more passive press looks fully DOA. What’s worse is even if we win a press right now? Our forward line isn’t fast enough to streak past.
It’s why the issue needs sorting in the market. We need fast, aggressive and creative wingers. And a 6 who’ll sit with Szobo whilst the front 4 go bonkers with Frimpong / Kerkez at FB.
Josh — hope you feel better for having written the article. It definitely helps make sense of the first half.
Candidly, I don’t think we deserved to lose. But we’re at a point where how people interpret the game depends on whether they’re looking at it from a half-full or half-empty perspective.
What concerns me more is the speed at which we conceded the two goals. We did well to keep our composure despite being outplayed in the first half, and it felt like our luck had turned after Ali’s walkabout early in the second half. But as soon as we conceded the first goal, our decision-making deteriorated rapidly.
As you say, there’s clear underlying improvement in how we’ve played over the past month. But psychologically, I think there are deeper issues we still haven’t resolved.
There's lot's of mitigating factors.
We've had one penalty this season, last season we got 9. A penalty is worth roughly a point. Against City we were denied a clear penalty with Salah getting pulled back in the act of shooting and a red card for Guehi's pull back (which also could have been a pen because it continued into the box). But we haven't had a single DOAGSO at Anfield go for us in over 12 years (although we've had several given against us.
Both Guardiola and Rodri had well reported complaint about the standard of referring in the press recently and unsurprisingly the big decisions went there way.
Now I've got no problem with the pen we conceded but would the game state have been the same if we'd been awarded the correct decisions.
We've got 3 natural RBs out injured - Dom did a great job but I suspect if one of the specialists had been playing he wouldn't Silva onside for the equaliser.
Hugo is great up top but he's still building his fitness and adjusting to the intensity of the PL without our other no 9 able to help manage his minutes.
Rio is too young and too vulnerable to injury, look at all the growing pains our young players have suffered with age and growth related injuries. He needs to be protected.
Slot's management of his squad and bench is a true concern. Last season, even when winning, he largely beasted the same core group of players. This season the same, even when they look knackered. Its as if truly doesn't trust or rate many players the club owns.
But I don’t blame him. Endo isn’t much of an option anymore. Like, come on. Rio, I would’ve used more, but he’s barely old enough to drive so I kinda get it. Robertson is fine, but Kerkez is doing well lately.
Jones is the one who I would’ve used earlier on the weekend. But right now, we don’t have much else.
This is the thing. We have 6 ‘top players’ who will approach their prime. Ibou, Kerkez, Szobo, Grav, Wirtz, Ekitike. But Szobo / Grav cancel each other out in midfield. So it’s really 5 in a lineup. That means we’re short 6 in the lineup alone, never mind the squad. That’s an awful state of affairs.
We’ve basically done the thing we never wanted to do. We’ve let and are letting players legs go on our watch. We need to get this rebuild VERY right. This summer and the next. Or that is when the problems really start.
Trouble is we spent £400m+ last summer and we have about half the players we need for a decent squad. At best.
To get a truly competitive side with a deep squad we need about another 7-8 players.
When viewed in that light the issues facing Slot are quite sizable.
.
Bingo. We basically have:-
Mama
Frimpong
Ibou
Jacquet
Kerkez
Grav
Szobo
Jones
Wirtz
Ekitike
Isak
Everyone else is questionable. That’s an 11 on paper, but not a sensible 11. So the rest of holes need filling. Fast!
I agree that Slots squad management is a true concern. Agree also that chiesa, endo etc are not at the same level as the starters. A good manager makes the most of what they have. I still believe 100% endo at 75min is better than a 10% Macca. Slot not only does he stick with the players he trusts until they are completely empty but also demotivates the squad players by making sure they know he does not count on them eg. with his press conferences. Your squad players need to believe that they have the opportunity to be in the first team so that they are ready when circumstances require them to play, Klopp was excellent at that. In my opinion this is a big red flag for Slot. You can’t compete in multiple fronts with 11-13 players, you need a full squad and it seems Slot is incapable of managing that.
Josh, I think you’re right on most of the what, but I’m still not convinced by the why you’re landing on.
Pep didn’t really spring some unknowable trap here. He just leaned into a weakness that’s been staring us in the face for months. Pulling Semenyo inside and dragging Virgil wide only becomes a problem because there’s no punishment due from our wingers. No one pins full-backs. No one forces City to drop five yards. So of course Pep overloads the middle. That’s not Slot being outfoxed — it’s Slot being short of profiles.
The long-ball, transition-heavy first half was ugly, no doubt. But I don’t think it was some philosophical failure or Slot losing his nerve. It felt more like an admission: trying to dominate City centrally with this midfield and these wide options would’ve been suicide. So he rolled the dice on variance instead. Not pretty, but I’m genuinely struggling to see the clean alternative he ignored in that moment.
And honestly, the second half kind of gives the whole game away. Once the surprise wore off and Liverpool settled, we were the better side. Not dominant, but competitive. We moved the ball quicker, played through the thirds, Kerkez stopped hesitating, Virgil stepped back into control. City weren’t carving us open anymore. We created chances and pushed them back. That doesn’t happen if the setup is fundamentally broken.
Then the same thing happened. Again. Around the 70–75 minute mark, the legs just went. Not a tactical choice. Not a conscious decision to drop deep. Just physical drop-off. Pressing turned into half-pressing. Recovery runs slowed. Distances stretched. And once you start defending space instead of players against City, you’re basically on borrowed time.
The goals themselves were pure season-in-microcosm stuff. A ridiculous free-kick. A messy equaliser born of a Virgil error in judgement and a makeshift right-back losing his line. An Alisson error you see once every few seasons. Thin margins biting because there’s no buffer in the squad.
Where I’m with you is on drift. Slot can’t let this season just fade into beige misery, fair or not. League form hardens narratives quickly. But I don’t think this is about him failing to “get” the Premier League. Europe tells a different story. England just exposes you harder when you’re missing pace, width, and a proper transition killer.
So yeah, I get the frustration. I share it. I just think that second half actually argues against this being a coaching collapse. The plan worked. The bodies didn’t.
I kinda disagree on the unknowable trap thing. I don’t think Slot saw the diamond coming. So Liverpool needed time to figure out what was happening. And once doing so, they needed to get that message to Kerkez while the match was playing out. Nightmare.
So regardless of profiles, the diamond curveball gave City a strategic edge for half an hour or so. Once Liverpool sorted that out, I’d argue they competed pretty well.
I agree that he didn’t see it coming and definitely gave Pep an edge. But Pep did it KNOWING we don’t have the profiles to get out of said trap.
Put fast wingers out wide? Suddenly we’re playing balls over their press and beyond their full backs. Diamond shatters. Plan would have to change.
Essentially Pep knew we had no get out clause. What Slot changed in the second half was smart. But the issue is that we don’t have the personnel to sustain it. So we did it for 30, then collapsed. Even if we had Curtis on, we’re not sustaining an M2M for the remaining 25 mins of the game.
The “this squad is too talented for this” line only works until you actually look at it properly. You’ve got four core players - Ali, Virgil, Mac, Salah - in clear physical or athletic decline. Still good footballers, still useful in spells, but no longer capable of carrying games week after week in England. You can manage one, maybe two. Four is structural. Add in a starter who shouldn’t really be starting right now - Gakpo - and suddenly you’re asking five genuinely fine players to carry six who can’t. That’s not underperformance — that’s maths.
On top of that, the fitness piece can’t be ignored. This team isn’t fading because the ideas are wrong or because players have forgotten how to play. They’re fading because the physical and tactical base was never properly laid in pre-season. Once that’s missing, everything costs more energy than it should. Pressing takes longer, recovery runs arrive late, and the ball moves that half-second slower. The plan can still look fine, but when the legs go, the structure leaks, and games turn into endurance tests you keep losing late on.
Then there’s profiling, which is where England really exposes you. This squad lacks proper wingers who stretch games and force full-backs to defend space, and it lacks a true deep playmaker who can speed the game up when legs are heavy and slow it down when chaos hits. Without width, without direct runners, and without someone who can consistently reset possession and kill transitions, even very good players end up looking blunt and leggy. The quality is there. The balance isn’t.
I am very much in agreement with you, but I am also in agreement with Simon's comment that this just cannot happen with a team with this talent level. I think ultimately your most prescient comment is "England just exposes you harder when you’re missing pace, width, and a proper transition killer." This team lacks both the general pace of a direct runner but also the pace in passing that we saw last year. Everything feels slow!
Do you think the pen was OK to give? It seemed pretty harsh given the City player had already taken his shot before Alisson ran into him
Pen for me. No idea what Alisson is doing.
Guardiola had tears in his eyes at the end of the match, went over to the away fans and was very much soaking it in. Did we see his last game at Anfield?
I feel physically sick since the game. I’m in bits physically. Awful result.
I think this match, being against our recent rivals the last 10 years, has everyone in an emotional flop. But actually it doesn’t mean a whole lot at all - transition season for both teams, neither of whom are likely to win the league at this point which is a big change from recent years.
In the context of chasing top 5 (alongside equally inconsitent teams in Villa/utd/chelsea), we aren’t all that worse off. city/arsenal will beat most of them when they play them, and they all still have to play each other. Funnily, our last 4 games are against those 3 sides and the other is brentford (who we are on equal pts with haha). There will be a scrap but I don’t see anyone waltzing into third and I think our chances for top 5 are still v strong.
The 24 from 20 looks and sounds awful, but as you rightly continuously point out, there are so many factors at play, the biggest of which is a grossly unbalanced squad. And if you look at the closer details you see how fine the margins have been across those 20 games.
People who start comparing runs to Hodgson and Rodgers etc can jog on. The league is not what it was 5 years ago, never mind 10/15/20.
I think everyone needs to dust themselves down, get focused on the weekend, bring some positivity.
Crazy as it seems, I think we finish 3rd still.
Thoroughly agree with the wingers comment. The team were completely boxed in the first half and Pep had nullified the use of Wirtz with the crowding of the midfield, we didn’t have a single out to use on the counter attack to bring us up the pitch from the wings. I remember vividly when Diaz took on walker a couple of seasons ago and dragged us up the pitch on his own. I struggle to see how a new manager will suddenly reap the rewards of this current crop of players. If slot has wingers such as Yan Diomande and Bazoumana Toure (realistic targets imo) either side you’d see a much better team. Team is crying out for some pace and 1 v 1 ability. Only ones with those traits at the moment I can think of is Ekitike and Frimpong.
Absolute Corruption...Same as the first's leg fake penalty, the DOGSO of Salah was overruled...
Refs have taken already 2 Premierships (the one that came to 1 point).
Not a surprise...
There's been plenty of criticism around squad management, misprofiling, and Slot being a poor tactician. To be honest, there's truth in most of it—but one thing I can't stop thinking about is intelligence.
I don't think we have intelligent players who can make good decisions at least eight times out of ten, particularly the wingers and midfielders. Take Gakpo, for example. He held onto the ball far too often when a simple pass to the fullback or Wirtz could have improved the play.
Gravenberch as well—he didn't know when to run, pass, mark, or even duel properly. Then you have Salah taking too many touches and struggling to control the ball. And Alisson with his blunder. I could go on, but I'll stop here.
My point is this: when too many players make poor decisions, you'll always fall short. I'd argue that with a few good decisions, we would have won the game. But winning is just three points—it would mask the other problems we have in the squad.
As I mentioned two weeks ago, we didn't build a balanced squad, and we're reaping the rewards now. Even if you brought in a new coach with 13 PL games left, plus a possible UCL and FA Cup run, it wouldn't do anything tangible because the damage has been done. That's why the suits are okay with throwing away the season and resetting in the summer.
It's painful to watch and analyse every time, but it is what it is. We just have to see it out now.
Blame percentage for me is now:
Suits: 75%
Slot: 25%
Earlier this year Josh was mentioned he felt (maybe hoped) this would not be a repeat of 2014-15 when Rodgers was throwing everything against the wall tactically to see if it stuck - one week Sterling's a striker the next he's a wingback in a back 5, Emre Can an overhead kick scoring 10 one week and a right-sided centerback in a back 3 the next.
However, as Slot still refuses to expand his use of the squad and keeps throwing new tactics out there, I am starting to get scared he is much more of a Rodgers than a Klopp. A really good manager that is great in mid-sized leagues, but struggles under intensely bright lights of a world heavyweight. His press conferences just have a very Brendan feel to them now! Both rode a forward having one of the greatest seasons in Premier League history to great heights, both seem to struggle to generate any offense without that player carrying them.
It is a weird place to be contemplating whether your manager should be fired when you are one of the favorites to win the Champions League. At the same time though, the EPL table since January 1 shows that Man United and Chelsea are first and second after changing managers with 14 and 13 points. Liverpool sit in 15th in that table with just 7 points since the new year. Even if you push back to since December 1 to include the "unbeaten" run, Liverpool would only be 9th with 18 points in the last 12 match rounds. So, there are not a lot of trends there to make one optimistic.
I know there has been a lot of weird bad luck this year, but at some point Slot is just going to have ignore everything and just make this team go grind out some wins. If he cannot do that in the next month, I don't know that he is that guy for the next couple of years.
He hasn’t been trying new tactics just to see what sticks. He’s been changing tactics because players keep dropping like flies. One minute it’s Frimpong, then Gakpo, then Bradley, then Ekitike, then someone else, then someone else. Slot isn’t Rogers. He’s a multi-League winner, and won WITH Liverpool.
People have been very unforgiving this season, during a time that’s probably the hardest at the club in decades. It’s as far away from singing ‘you’ll never walk alone’ as it can get. If anyone is making this season even more grim? It’s the fans. Just fighting each other all day.
I don’t disagree, but you could argue City barely turned up for the second 45. And only ended up winning the game because we ceded all sense of control.