Arne Slot knows the noise. At Liverpool, it never really stops. Win the Premier League in your first season and you buy yourself time, not immunity. A year on, that reality is starting to bite.
The Dutchman’s second campaign has veered away from the script. A 4-0 humiliation at the hands of Manchester City in the FA Cup quarter-finals has left scars, not just on the scoreboard but on the perception of a side that once looked reborn under his watch. Champions League qualification, which felt like a formality not long ago, now hangs in the balance.
And looming on the horizon: Paris Saint-Germain in a Champions League quarter-final that suddenly feels like a test of more than just tactics. Liverpool go into it as clear underdogs. A heavy defeat there would not just end a European run; it would drag Slot closer to a conversation no manager wants.
The pitch to FSG
If Slot is to keep his job, Phil Jagielka believes the answer lies not in sentiment, but in a hard, footballing argument delivered straight to the top.
Speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Monday Night Club, the former Sheffield United, Everton and England defender laid out the case he thinks Slot must make to Fenway Sports Group.
“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.
It’s a simple message: back me properly, then judge me.
Jagielka pointed to what he sees as structural failings in the squad build, not just in-game issues. “They should have got a centre-half in the summer and didn’t,” he said, highlighting a problem that has lingered all season. At the other end, injuries have bitten hard. “They have not had [Alexander] Isak; OK, he wasn’t playing great before he got injured, but they have not had him.”
The result has been a team patched together too often, too high up the pitch and too vulnerable at the back. For a coach whose game model leans on intensity and control, those absences and omissions matter.
And then there is the looming void on the right.
Life after Salah
Liverpool already know that Mohamed Salah will not be at Anfield next season. That single fact reshapes everything: system, recruitment, hierarchy in the dressing room.
Jagielka sees that as both a problem and a potential release. “Obviously, we know the news that [Mohamed] Salah won’t be there next season, so that could be a slightly different formation, or maybe a bit less of a headache of how to play him,” he suggested.
Slot, in Jagielka’s view, must lean into that moment of transition. Go to the board, accept the criticism, but sell a clear football plan.
“I think if you are Arne Slot and are going in to speak to your board, that is how you sell, I won’t say the dream, but you say sign me three players, a couple of defenders and maybe another forward option, and he’d probably back himself,” Jagielka said.
The subtext is obvious. Slot can argue he has been “a bit unlucky or naive” in not landing another defender, but the evidence is on the pitch: those are the positions where Liverpool have struggled most. Fix the spine, get a fully fit forward line, and then judge whether the manager is the problem or the platform.
FSG will listen. But they will also hear another name echoing around Anfield corridors and boardrooms across Europe.
‘Bonnie Prince Jurgen’ across the water
Jurgen Klopp’s shadow was always going to linger. It has now taken on a more provocative shape.
Speaking to Football Insider, former Aston Villa and Everton chief executive Keith Wyness revealed that talk of a sensational Klopp return is doing the rounds in his circle.
“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 the kind of romantic notion that grips a fanbase and unnerves a manager. Klopp walking back into Anfield to “reclaim his throne” is the stuff of banners, documentaries and fevered phone-ins.
Wyness himself called it “a little bit fanciful”, but he also admitted: “In football, we never know. And there is that rumour strongly circulating in my network and that could be the case.”
The dream scenario, then, is clear. Klopp returns, the Kop erupts, and Liverpool reset around the man who turned them into European and domestic champions. It would be, as Wyness put it, “the go-to fantastic solution that would perk the Liverpool fans up.”
But romantic stories don’t always align with boardroom calculations.
Xabi Alonso still the favourite
While Klopp’s name stirs the heart, Wyness believes the head points elsewhere.
“Now, Xabi Alonso, to me, is still the favourite to take over,” he said. “I think the dream of Jurgen coming back is a bit of a big dream, but it would obviously be the go-to fantastic solution… They’re going to have to get used to Xabi Alonso and I do think that will be the move that will be made.”
Alonso, a Liverpool icon in his own right and a rising star in management, has long been viewed as a natural successor in the post-Klopp era. The fact his name is being mentioned so strongly again underlines how fragile Slot’s position has become.
This is not just background noise. Liverpool have already brought their end-of-season review forward as they analyse Slot’s future. That decision alone tells its own story: the club is not waiting for the final whistle in May to decide whether this project continues.
Slot now stands at a crossroads. On one side, a compelling case that injuries, missed signings and looming squad upheaval have distorted the picture, and that with two centre-backs and a forward he can launch a second wave. On the other, the pull of nostalgia, the promise of Alonso, and the seductive notion of Klopp returning “across the water”.
The next few weeks, starting with that daunting tie against PSG, will not just shape Liverpool’s season. They will decide whether Arne Slot ever gets the chance to build the team he believes he was hired to create.
