There was a certain symmetry about Arne Slot being relieved of his job at Liverpool in the hours before Arsenal were about to play in a Champions League final. As other big English clubs surge forwards, Liverpool have been left behind.
Nobody would have laid a bet on this a year ago. Slot had the Premier League trophy in his hands and a wave of new signings on the way. The decline of the Dutch coach and his team of title winners has been as alarming as anything we have witnessed in English football for many years.
Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City fell of something of a cliff after winning their fourth successive title in 2024. But not like this.
Leicester tumbled down the league like a snowball down a mountain the year after their 2016 miracle. But was anybody really surprised?
Liverpool’s metamorphosis from winners to serial losers has been something else entirely. And this – in short is – is why Slot has gone.
Over the course of a tortuous season of reverse travel, he lost his grip on his results, his players and, as is often the way, his own sense of reality.
A good man and a good coach who will doubtless come again, Slot leaves Anfield still pointing at injuries and bad luck. His Liverpool team have had their share of both. But the truth is that once Liverpool slipped into a decline that nobody saw coming, their manager proved absolutely powerless to pull them out of it. He failed.
This season Liverpool’s have been calamitous. Erratic defending – particularly at set-pieces – has been combined with a lack of ability to control games and a tendency to collapse late on in matches.
Arne Slot was sacked by Liverpool on Saturday – just a year after he led them to the title
Slot’s team have lost 12 times in the Premier League this season. The swing in points between them and their great rivals Manchester United was an astonishing 53. Champions League qualification was theirs only because the Premier League’s quota now stands at five.
None of that adds up to an argument for retaining the manager. For a while – as social media turned its ire on Slot midway through the season – it seemed only right to give Slot more time and indeed some understanding. I argued for that.
The loss of his big summer signing Alexander Isak to injury felt catastrophic as did the loss of Mo Salah’s form, loyalty and interest. Other new signings – players such as Florian Wirtz, Milos Kerkez and Jeremie Frimpong – failed to perform.
This would have tested any manager. But it’s the fact there was no improvement during the season – no hint at solutions being found – that has ultimately done for this one. Once Liverpool’s early run of victories – some of them freakish – petered out, Slot simply could not halt the horror show that started to unfold before his eyes.
Over time his players looked demotivated, disorganised and out of ideas. Salah’s one-man protest – that began in November and never relented – reflects terribly on the Egyptian but as a title defence morphed in to a desperate search for something approaching mere credibility, Slot looked increasingly alone, isolated and lost in a sea of public denial.
Slot kisses the Premier League trophy during happier times for the Dutchman at Anfield
The final game of the season perhaps summed it up as Liverpool scored against Brentford only to concede a soft equaliser and then hang on grimly at the end. It was unedifying for a team of so-called champions and a movie the home fans had simply seen too many times before.
So Liverpool now stand on the precipice. The squad Slot leaves behind needs yet another overhaul. It lacks youth in some areas and experience and know-how in others. Only this week it transpired that central defender Ibrahima Konate will join Salah and Andy Robertson in walking out of the door.
Not only do Liverpool need to hire the right manager, they need to recruit the right players. Will Isak ever become a true Liverpool player? Will Hugo Ekitike return with the same sharpness following a devastating Achilles injury?
What looked like a platform for the future as Liverpool got busy quickly in the market this time last year, now looks as reliable as a rubber dinghy in the middle of the ocean. So now they have to do it again and there is no guarantee of a quick fix. Liverpool’s return could take a while.
But Slot is overboard now and there is some sadness about that. He took Liverpool to the top of the tree very quickly. But it’s impossible to say it’s the wrong decision. Too much of what we have seen from his team has been rotten for too long.
