With 13 games left of the 2025-26 Premier League season, Liverpool are close to the relegation zone than they are top spot.
The Reds sit 17 points behind league leaders Arsenal, while they have just a 13-point cushion over 18th-placed West Ham United. This isn’t how this season was supposed to go for the reigning champions.
Having coasted to the Premier League title last summer, Liverpool spent heavily in the summer in a bid to retain their crown.
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Florian Wirtz, Hugo Ekitike and Alexander Isak arrived for a combined £300million, while Jeremie Frimpong and Milos Kerkez freshened up the full-back areas. The Reds also tied Virgil van Dijk and Mo Salah to new deals towards the end of the campaign. The future looked bright for Liverpool.
Many had Liverpool down as title favourites despite the squad overhaul. Few expected a transitional campaign, despite the fact that Slot had to bed in eight new faces. Yet teething issues were apparent from the start.
Wirtz wasn’t able to necessarily put his stamp on things as he acclimatised to the rigours of English football. Isak arrived half-fit. Salah had lost his supply line in Trent Alexander-Arnold, and his legs in Dominik Szoboszlai. This team was no longer built to be Salah FC. Instead of playing to his strengths, the system seemed to expose Salah’s weakness.
At first, it was a case of short-term pain for long-term gain. You play through the bad patches if there’s a clear system and vision in mind. Slot seemed to waver a little, benching Wirtz initially before making the bold decision to drop Salah following a string of poor results. A run of 10 goals conceded in three losses to PSV, Nottingham Forest and Manchester City seemed to be the tipping point.
Slot ripped it all up to start again. Liverpool adopted a more defensive setup with Salah benched. It paid off, in a sense. The Reds stopped conceding as many goals.
Liverpool stopped giving up as many chances. But the sacrific was in attack. Yes, they were having slightly more shots per 90 minutes, but their Expected Goals average wasn’t as high. In a nutshell, the Reds were having more lower-value efforts due to their inability to create higher-value opportunities.
The fixture list had also been a little more favourable too. Following the 3-0 defeat to Forest, Liverpool went on a 10-match unbeaten streak in the Premier League. However, due to these games becoming low event ones for both sides, Liverpool won just four of those 10 games. That’s despite facing Leeds United twice, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Burnley, West Ham, an out-of-sorts Tottenham Hotspur and Sunderland at Anfield.
Between the end of November and mid-January, Liverpool played just one team you’d consider to be a top side. And that was Arsenal. The Liverpool of yesteryear would have taken 25 from a possible 30 at the bare minimum. This Reds side managed 18.
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Following two losses in their last three Premier League games, Liverpool are five points outside the top four. Their last outing saw them beaten 2-1 by Man City at Anfield. But Slot was surprisingly positive after the defeat.
“There are still a lot of games to be played,” he said.
“We showed, in my opinion, we have improved a lot from three or four months ago when we played Manchester City. The second half, still being so powerful to press them all over the pitch, tells me how much improvement we have made.”
The previous defeat to Man City was a game of luck. Man City had all of the luck, while Liverpool had none of it. The Citizens scored two deflected goals and a worldie. Their non-penalty xG on the day was just 0.72. At Anfield on Sunday, Pep Guardiola’s side had a non-penalty xG of 1.96.
Liverpool did press higher, but after that initial press was beaten, there was little to no resistance from the Reds. Bypass the high, aggressive press, and Slot’s side didn’t put up much of a fight in the other two thirds of the pitch. Liverpool seemed to stand off Man City and allowed them time and space in possession.
On another day, Man City secure a much more comfortable win. The fact Erling Haaland netted what turned out to be the extra-time winner from the penalty spot skews the narrative somewhat.
Liverpool did a better job against Man City at the Etihad. In truth, Liverpool looked better before Slot made sweeping changes at the end of November.
The improvements Slot spoke of were at the expense of the attack. It wasn’t an improvement, it was simply adopting a more defensive approach and facing inferior opposition.
Liverpool’s defence-first approach needs to be shelved if the Reds are to gatecrash the top four. With a number of low-block teams on the horizon for Liverpool, Slot needs to twist rather than sticking.