These are abnormal times at Anfield and so Arne Slot reached for a semblance of normality. A manager who can be at his most rational after defeats said it was normal that, in such circumstances, there would be talk about his position.
Nine weeks ago, there were none, and for obvious reasons. Liverpool had a five-point lead at the Premier League summit. Slot had won the title in his maiden season. He seemed the seamless successor, the Bob Paisley to Jurgen Klopp’s Bill Shankly. Now there are other flashbacks to Liverpool’s past: by losing three successive matches by at least three goals, Slot has done something no one accomplished since the long-forgotten Don Welsh in the relegation season of 1953-54.
A more recent appointment has pertinence now. Liverpool lost at Chelsea on 4 October, a decade to the day since they last sacked a manager in Brendan Rodgers. Since then, they have hardly had to consider the question. Klopp’s charisma and force of personality were reasons he was clearly a wonderful fit, and while progress was not always smooth in the three-and-a-half years before he first won silverware, it was evident. He then had the cachet of being a Champions League winner, an Anfield great.
While Liverpool endured some wretched runs and bad defeats in two subsequent seasons, in 2020-21 and 2022-23, there were mitigating factors, in the absence of fit senior centre-backs and then the lack of a functioning midfield, respectively. In each case, too, Klopp showed a capacity to turn things around. Liverpool finished one of its off-years with five straight victories, the other with seven wins in nine. But as he noted after 2022’s 4-1 thrashing by Napoli: “Our owners are rather calm and expect from me to sort the situation and not expect that someone else will sort it.” That always seemed to be Fenway Sports Group’s (FSG) approach, even if Rodgers may feel otherwise.
Like Klopp, Slot shows a willingness to take responsibility for defeats, even if it is actually shared. The test is whether he, too, can inspire a turnaround. A run of nine defeats in 12 has contained two slumps, because victories over Aston Villa and Real Madrid prompted the thought that Liverpool were again headed in the right direction.
Then, once again, it unravelled at startling speed in the Anfield reverses to Nottingham Forest and PSV Eindhoven. Rather than getting better, it got worse. And yet, in some respects, it was simply more of the same. More goals conceded because of set-pieces, counterattacks and individual errors, more where they looked ragged and had to chase a game. They have further evidence that Mohamed Salah’s inability to track back is a problem, that Ibrahima Konate is in awful form and that, rather than Alexander Isak, they really should have bought Marc Guehi on deadline day and, if Slot does not trust him, sold Joe Gomez.
Meanwhile, Isak is no nearer match fitness and Liverpool are playing with 10 men whenever the £125m man is on the pitch. Slot still regards last season’s midfield as a comfort blanket, but even when Ryan Gravenberch, Alexis Mac Allister and Dominik Szoboszlai are reunited, that is no guarantee against chastening defeats. Left-back has been a problem position for nearly all of the season – Steven Gerrard’s caustic observation that Milos Kerkez spent most of the PSV game out of position rang sadly true – and right-back for swathes of it.
Does Slot have the answers? There has been too little evidence in the last two months to suggest that he does. Over his reign, it is worth noting that he still has the highest win percentage of any Liverpool manager; even if he did not win any of the next eight, it would still be above Paisley’s.
But the economist in Klopp always knew that Champions League qualification had a huge financial importance for Liverpool and they are currently 12th in the Premier League. It is a status symbol, a barometer of what can be achieved when the title is gone. Last autumn, Pep Guardiola had his own run of nine losses in 12; those with any understanding of Manchester City never expected him to be sacked and nor should he have been. Guardiola salvaged third place for the season. Could Slot do something similar?
He said on Wednesday that he felt “a lot of support from above”. Like Klopp before him, he presents a united front. “I am feeling safe,” Slot said. The inscrutability of FSG’s CEO, Michael Edwards, can make it hard to determine if he is right to. A crucial element could be if director of football Richard Hughes and Edwards blame themselves for what increasingly looks like a misguided spending spree, or feel that they have done their jobs and Slot has not done his. But Slot won with the team assembled on Klopp’s watch and is losing with the players expensively acquired in his reign. And a worrying element is that there are too few signs that will change.
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