Liverpool manager Arne Slott is under increasing pressure despite believing his job is secure after a weak defense of the Premier League title this season.
Arne Slott is struggling with his team’s 12th loss in the Premier League this season (Image: AFP via Getty Images)
When Dominik Szoboszlai, the club’s standout player of the 2025/26 season, put Aston Villa ahead with their second goal on Friday night, it was a moment that summed up Liverpool’s ill-fated Premier League title defence. On another night, Szoboszlai might get away with the blunder, but as it turned out, Morgan Rogers and Ollie Watkins still had quite a bit of work to do.
Instead, Rodgers gave Watkins a clean assist, and Watkins’ finish was brilliant, catching a corner kick but half-squashing it. In other words, everything that could go wrong for Liverpool went wrong for Liverpool.
Everything that could go wrong with the Arne slot could go wrong with the Arne slot. And that will also apply when looking back on his season.
First of all, slots tend not to make excuses of this kind. He explains the bad results but doesn’t make excuses.
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Anyway, as the cliché goes, he knows that the final judgment on his work will be based on the results. On top of that, he is also aware that he is underperforming in light of the expectations of everyone involved at the club.
But despite those expectations, Liverpool do not have some kind of divine right to win trophies every year. They should be able to endure a bad season and bounce back.
There was also a bad season in 2022-23, when Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool finished fifth in the Premier League. In the FA Cup, they were eliminated in the fourth round by Brighton, and in the Champions League, their hopes of qualifying for Real Madrid ended in the round of 16.
Liverpool and Mohamed Salah feel the absence of Trent Alexander-Arnold (Image: Getty Images)
Liverpool will likely finish fifth or fourth in the Premier League in the 2025-26 season. In the FA Cup, they were eliminated in the quarter-finals by Manchester City, and their hopes of qualifying for the Champions League were ended by Paris Saint-Germain in the last eight.
A relatively disappointing campaign could result. If that relatively disappointing season was due to the manager’s obvious inadequacies, his position is unsustainable.
However, Slott was clearly not lacking in power, finishing second best in a fight that had a series of setbacks. Last summer he lost Luis Dias and Trent Alexander-Arnold, but their importance to Liverpool cannot be overstated.
Add to that the fact that Mohamed Salah’s form has fallen off a cliff, and suddenly the Egyptian’s presence has become more confusing than inspiring. Salah’s statement that he wanted Liverpool to “return to a heavy metal attacking team” said more about the player himself than about the manager he threw under the bus. Salah has hardly been heavy metal this season.
Among the big-ticket new signings, Hugo Ekitike had a decent run before suffering a nasty Achilles injury just before Alexander Isak was returning from a broken leg.
Alexander Isak’s first season at Liverpool was interrupted by injury (Image: Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)
Jeremy Frimpong has already missed more games due to injury for Liverpool than he did in four-and-a-half years with Bayer Leverkusen. As the manager himself is sure to say, these are not excuses for Liverpool’s poor title defense or lack of performance in other competitions, but they are explanations.
Slott was given a three-year contract when he joined the club in 2024, and Liverpool fans would probably have been happy if he had said he would win the Premier League title in one of those three years. He did it in his first year, breaking Manchester City’s unprecedented dominance.
Whatever happens on the final day of Premier League play, he at least deserves an effort to right the wrongs of this season.
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