Liverpool were booed off by their own fans after a dull draw with Chelsea on Saturday, and Arne Slot did not hide from the scale of the problem. The manager said he knows exactly what is wrong with his team and how to get them playing like champions again, adding: "I know what we need to get that done."
He also said he was "100 per cent convinced" Liverpool would be a different team next season if they can get the summer they want, different in results and different in how they look. For a side that won the Premier League in Slot's debut campaign on Merseyside, that is a sharp fall from a team that looked in control of its own story less than a year ago.
The numbers explain why the mood at Anfield has turned sour. Liverpool are 24 points worse off than at this stage last season, have suffered 11 league defeats and 18 defeats in total this campaign, their most since 2014-15. Chelsea's equaliser at the weekend was also Liverpool's 18th goal conceded from a set play this season, a joint second-worst record in the league and a sign that the same weakness has been dragging through the side for months.
That regression can in many ways be traced back to the defeat at Crystal Palace at the end of September, when Eddie Nketiah scored a 97th-minute winner after Liverpool failed to deal with a long throw into their box and conceded from a set play twice. Set-piece coach Aaron Briggs lost his job in December, but the problem has not gone away. It has simply kept showing up in different ways, and on the weekend it was Chelsea who punished them again.
Slot believes he will be given the chance to put things right next season, and Fenway Sports Group are understood to have no plans to part company with him. That matters because the pressure around Liverpool is not only about form; it is about whether the club still trusts the man who delivered the title in his first year to correct a slide that has made a champion look ordinary.
Roy Keane put that bluntly on television, saying Liverpool are easy to play against this year. "If teams think you're easy to play against, that's an insult off the back of winning the league," he said. "That will hurt the players and the manager the most." Keane also pointed to the same flaw that has haunted Liverpool all season: "The softness with Liverpool is even in their decision making."
There is also the shadow of what comes next. Slot has one year left on his deal at Anfield, and while the club appears set to give him time, the wider football conversation has already started to turn toward alternatives, with Xabi Alonso waiting in the wings. For now, Liverpool are still his team, still his problem, and still short of the authority that made them champions. If the summer Slot wants never fully arrives, the noise around Anfield will only get louder.
