Liverpool on the Brink: Can Arne Slot Save the Season?

Slot’s Liverpool: Heading Towards the Champions’ Abyss?

After investing 450 million pounds in signings this summer, Liverpool, the current Premier League champion, is facing an unexpected crisis. After 12 matchdays, Arne Slot’s team is heading towards becoming the worst defending champion in the history of the competition. Slot, who took over with the task of continuing the successful era of Jürgen Klopp, is now facing a completely different challenge. The 47-year-old coach is struggling to find his way, and his team threatens to make history for the wrong reasons. The situation is worrying. Mohamed Salah has lost his goalscoring touch, star signings Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz, who cost more than 100 million pounds each, have not performed as expected, and Ibrahima Konaté has personified a defensive fragility that has led the team to concede more goals than it has scored.

• Liverpool ratings: Isak, Konaté get 3/10 in woeful loss to Forest
• VAR Review: Murillo goal vs. Liverpool, Igor Jesus handball
• Why Liverpool have struggled to gel after summer transfer spree

The 3-0 home defeat to Nottingham Forest marked the first time Liverpool has lost two consecutive league games by three goals since 1965. This is the sixth defeat in seven league games, a run that has seen the team fall from first place to eleventh. Only José Mourinho’s Chelsea, in the 2014-15 season, has had a worse start as defending champion, with seven defeats in their first 12 matches. That bad streak led to Mourinho’s dismissal in December 2015, just seven months after leading the Blues to the title for the third time. The Blackburn Rovers (champions in 1994-95) and Leicester City (2015-16) are the only teams to have recorded six defeats in their first 12 matches as defending champions. Blackburn managed to recover to finish seventh in 1995-96, but Leicester, after dismissing their coach Claudio Ranieri in February 2017, finished the season in 12th position, the lowest position for a Premier League champion, two places below where Chelsea finished the previous year.

Is Liverpool heading towards the ignominy of Leicester, with a finish in the bottom half of the table? Or will Slot be able to stop the fall and lead his team to success this season?

The pressure is on Slot to quickly reverse the situation.

“Of course, there is a way out, especially with the quality of players we have. But I want to emphasize that I am responsible for the current losses. You are responsible when you win, but also responsible when you lose. I cannot give enough excuses for the results we have. That is not good enough and I am responsible for that”.

Arne Slot

The team captain, Virgil van Dijk, offered a more critical assessment of the team’s failures, suggesting that the players must take some of the blame and questioning whether all his teammates are doing their best for the team. Slot has many problems to solve, but the question is where to start, and some of them don’t have an obvious solution. In defense, alongside Van Dijk, Konaté’s form has declined, but Slot has no alternative. The failure to finalize the signing of Marc Guéhi from Crystal Palace on the last day of the transfer market now haunts Liverpool.

Perhaps it has been overlooked that Liverpool substitute Giovanni Leoni, 18, signed from Parma, suffered a cruciate ligament injury in September and will be out until next season. But Konaté’s loss of form has affected Van Dijk, as has the prolonged absence of goalkeeper Alisson Becker, who played his first match since September 30 in the defeat against Forest.

On the left side, Slot has taken too long to realize that Milos Kerkez is too inexperienced to replace Andy Robertson. Meanwhile, Trent Alexander-Arnold’s move to Real Madrid is felt every week on the right side, where Liverpool has often had to resort to playing midfielder Dominik Szoboszlai. With a defense that has become so inconsistent and unreliable, Liverpool’s midfielders are struggling to cope with the demands placed on them, especially when Slot selects Wirtz. The German international has not registered a single goal or assist in 11 Premier League matches; he has two assists in four UEFA Champions League matches. The 22-year-old has repeatedly failed to deal with the pace and physicality he faces weekly in England, and rivals have already noticed this and are exploiting his weaknesses. And in attack, nothing works, which is the most notable failure of Slot and his players considering the depth of talent available. Isak has yet to score a league goal since arriving from Newcastle United, and his work rate is already generating audible frustration among Liverpool fans. Meanwhile, Salah, the Player of the Year from last season, is performing like a player who wishes he had moved to new pastures in the summer instead of signing a new two-year contract. As for Hugo Ekitike, the apparent success story of the summer market, it’s now one goal in nine appearances for the French international and no Premier League goals in over two months. The imminent departure of Salah to the Africa Cup of Nations with Egypt next month may still decipher the code for Slot, perhaps allowing him to line up Isak, Wirtz and Ekitike with the instruction that now is their moment, instead of Salah’s. But none of them show signs of being able to face that challenge. So it’s up to Slot to pull the team out of the hole and make sure Liverpool doesn’t end this season as the worst defending champion in Premier League history.