Arne Slot knows the numbers. Premier League title in year one, the impossible act of following Jurgen Klopp somehow pulled off at the first attempt. Yet less than a season later, the mood around Anfield has shifted from disbelief to doubt.
A 4-0 hammering by Manchester City in the FA Cup quarter-finals left scars. The league form has sagged. Champions League qualification is under threat. And now, with Paris Saint-Germain looming in a quarter-final where Liverpool are clear underdogs, Slot walks a tightrope that feels thinner by the week.
Inside the club, the debate has already started. Outside, the noise is getting louder.
The case for keeping Slot
On BBC Radio 5 Live’s Monday Night Club, Phil Jagielka cut through the hysteria and went straight to the heart of the football problem. For him, this is not about romance or legacy. It is about recruitment.
“If Arne Slot walked in there and said, ‘give me next season,’ he says, ‘give me a centre-half or two, give me a strike force that is fit, and you will see a different team,’” Jagielka argued.
This is the pitch Slot must now perfect in front of FSG.
Jagielka’s view is blunt: Liverpool misfired in the market. They needed a centre-back last summer and never got one. They have been stretched, patched up, exposed. At the top end of the pitch, they have lacked continuity and rhythm.
“They should have got a centre-half in the summer and didn’t,” he said, pointing to a structural flaw rather than a tactical one.
Jagielka also highlighted the absence of Alexander Isak, noting that while the forward was hardly flying before injury, Liverpool have still been deprived of a key option. On top of that comes the looming departure of Mohamed Salah, a seismic change that forces a rethink of the entire attacking blueprint.
“Obviously, we know the news that [Mohamed] Salah won’t be there next season,” Jagielka added. That reality, he suggested, could open the door to a different shape, a different emphasis, and fewer selection headaches over how to fit Salah into the system.
From Slot’s perspective, this becomes his survival strategy. Walk into the boardroom, accept some naivety over the lack of a defender, and then go on the front foot. Ask for three players: “a couple of defenders and maybe another forward option,” as Jagielka framed it. Back himself to turn those pieces into a sharper, more resilient Liverpool.
“They are two positions where they have struggled,” Jagielka said of the back line and attack. Fix them, and the argument runs that the manager looks very different too.
FSG’s dilemma and the Klopp spectre
The stakes around that conversation have risen sharply. Liverpool have brought their end-of-season review forward, a clear signal that Slot’s position is under active scrutiny rather than quietly parked until May.
And hovering over everything is a familiar shadow.
In an interview with Football Insider, former Aston Villa and Everton chief executive Keith Wyness revealed that talk of a sensational Klopp return is doing the rounds.
“There was one interesting thought the other day that somebody gave me, that there’s Bonnie Prince Jurgen waiting across the water to come back and reclaim his throne,” Wyness said.
It is an image that will light up any Liverpool supporter: Klopp, refreshed and re-energised, stepping back into Anfield to rescue the project he built. Wyness himself called it “a little bit fanciful,” but he also admitted the rumour is “strongly circulating” in his network.
In football, that is often all it takes to fuel a narrative.
For now, though, Klopp is an idea, not a plan. Wyness still believes Xabi Alonso remains the likeliest long-term successor, calling the former Liverpool midfielder the favourite “to take over” and warning that fans may have to “get used to Xabi Alonso” rather than dream of a Klopp encore.
Yet the very fact Klopp’s name is back in the conversation tells its own story. When results wobble and the football looks flat, nostalgia rushes in. FSG must decide whether to resist it or ride it.
PSG, pressure and a manager’s pitch
The Champions League tie against PSG now carries a weight far beyond a place in the semi-finals. Liverpool arrive as clear underdogs. A heavy defeat would not just end a European campaign; it would sharpen every question about Slot’s future.
If the season unravels from here — no FA Cup, no serious title push, no Champions League football next year — the argument for a reset grows stronger. That is the reality Slot faces.
His counter-argument has already been sketched out by Jagielka: frame this season as a bruising but fixable step in a longer rebuild. Emphasise the injuries, the thinness at centre-back, the lack of a fully functioning forward line, the impending Salah departure. Admit mistakes in the market, but insist they are correctable.
Then ask FSG for one more year and three key signings.
Liverpool’s owners now stand at a familiar crossroads: trust the structure and the coach they installed, or tear it up and chase a new vision, perhaps with a club legend or a returning icon at the helm.
Slot cannot control the rumours about Klopp. He cannot control the whispers about Alonso. He can only control the next 90 minutes, the next team talk, the next meeting in the boardroom where he must convince FSG that this is a blip, not a breakdown.
The question is simple, and brutal: do Liverpool see Arne Slot as the man to shape the post-Salah era, or just the bridge to whoever comes next?
