Liverpool on the brink: Will Slot be able to save the champions?

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

After investing £450 million in new signings this summer, Liverpool finds itself at a crossroads. After winning its twentieth league championship last season, Arne Slot’s team risks becoming the worst defending champion in the Premier League. Slot, who was presented as the perfect successor to Jürgen Klopp, faces a completely different challenge. The 47-year-old coach is struggling, so much so that his team threatens to make history for the wrong reasons.

Mohamed Salah has lost his goalscoring touch, the summer signings Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz, who cost more than 100 million pounds, have been costly disappointments and Ibrahima Konaté has embodied a defensive crisis that has seen the team concede more goals than it has scored.

• Liverpool Ratings: Isak, Konaté get 3/10 in woeful Nottingham Forest loss
• VAR Review: Murillo goal vs Liverpool, Igor Jesus handball disallowed
• Why Liverpool has struggled to fit in after summer transfer spending

The 3-0 home defeat against Nottingham Forest marked the first time Liverpool has lost consecutive league matches by three goals since 1965. It was their sixth defeat in seven league games, a run that dates back to September 27th and has seen them drop from first place to eleventh. Only Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea, as champions in 2014-15, has had a worse start in the defense of their title, with seven defeats in their first 12 matches.

Is Liverpool heading for ignominy in the style of Leicester, with a finish in the bottom half of the table? Or can Slot stop the fall and guide his team towards some kind of success this season?

With almost a third of the Premier League season gone, Liverpool, the defending champion, is in the bottom half of the table. The pressure is on Slot to quickly reverse the situation.

“Of course, there is a way out, especially with the quality players we have”, Slot said after the defeat against Forest. “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 find enough excuses for us to have the results we have. That is not good enough and I am responsible for that”.

Slot

Virgil van Dijk, offered a harsher assessment of the team’s failures, suggesting that the players must accept some of the blame and questioning whether all of his teammates are doing everything possible for the team.

“As champions, we cannot be in the situation we are in now, but it is a fact,” said the central defender. “What are we going to do about it? We are going to try to turn it around and that is the mentality that everyone should have. The main thing for me is that everyone has to take responsibility. Are people doing it? I don’t know. But you have to do it.”

Virgil van Dijk

In defense alongside Van Dijk, Konaté’s form has deserted him, but Slot has no alternative. The failure to complete a deal on the last day for Crystal Palace defender, Marc Guéhi, now haunts Liverpool. Perhaps it has been overlooked that Liverpool’s backup option, Giovanni Leoni, the 18-year-old 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.

On the left side, Slot has taken too long to realize that Milos Kerkez is too young and inexperienced to replace Andy Robertson. Meanwhile, the departure of Trent Alexander-Arnold to Real Madrid is now 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 Wirtz is selected by Slot. The German international has not registered a single goal or assist in 11 Premier League appearances; 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 opponents have already realized this and are exploiting his weaknesses. In attack, nothing is working, 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 supporters. Meanwhile, Salah, last season’s footballer of the year, is performing like a player who would have wished to have 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 window, 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 break 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.