Arne Slot Reflects on Liverpool's Season of Decisions

Arne Slot walked into the press room at Anfield with Champions League football secured and a season to explain.

Fifth place. A flat 1-1 draw with Brentford. A subdued farewell for Mohamed Salah and Andy Robertson. This was not the title defence Liverpool imagined.

A season of decisions – and consequences

Slot did not hide behind the league table or the injuries list. He admitted what everyone inside Anfield already knew: he had not always got it right.

"Not what I would have loved us to achieve this season before we started," he said, reflecting on a campaign that began with ambition and ended with a scramble for fourth that fell short. "We, I, haven't been perfect."

The words hung there. Not an excuse, a confession.

History will circle back to this season and linger on one decision in particular: Salah’s handling. Benched in November and December during a catastrophic run of nine defeats in 12 games, the Egyptian’s reduced role detonated into a full-blown saga.

Salah publicly criticised his head coach. Slot responded with what was effectively a one-match suspension. The relationship never fully recovered. By spring, one of Liverpool’s greatest modern players was negotiating an exit with a year still left on a lucrative contract.

For a club that has built its recent identity around stability and clarity, the optics were stark.

Slot’s loyalty to certain under-performing players will also be revisited. He kept faith with them long after their form deserted them, while 18-year-old Rio Ngumoha remained on the fringes until injuries and form crises left the coach with almost no other choice. When the teenager finally featured more regularly, the question felt unavoidable: why did it take so long?

Slot insisted there was method, not stubbornness, behind his calls.

"All the decisions I've made throughout the whole season has been only with one idea, and that's being very well prepared," he said. "Not every decision can be the right one so it would be stupid for me to sit here and say all the decisions I've made were the right ones."

He believed in them at the time. That, he argued, is all a manager can do.

Grief, injuries and a season derailed

There were reasons, and some of them cut deep.

Before a ball was kicked, Liverpool’s summer was shattered by the death of Diogo Jota in a car crash on the eve of pre-season. No tactical tweak can absorb that kind of loss. The emotional toll on the dressing room was immeasurable, and it shadowed everything that followed.

Then came the injuries. Relentless, destabilising injuries.

"If you asked me one word to describe this season, I would describe that with the word 'injury'," Slot said.

British record signing Alexander Isak missed 28 matches and started only eight Premier League games. The forward who was supposed to spearhead the title defence became a ghost presence on the team sheet.

Alisson Becker, the safety net behind it all, sat out 20 games. First-choice right-back Conor Bradley missed 32. Jeremie Frimpong lost 19. Wataru Endo, brought in to anchor midfield, missed 18. New 19-year-old centre-back Giovani Leoni saw his debut – and his season – end after just 81 minutes.

At times, Slot barely had choices to make. The team picked itself through whoever was left standing.

Salah’s last Anfield act falls flat

On the pitch, the final day against Brentford offered one last chance for a clean, emotional send-off for Salah and Robertson. The script never quite arrived.

All eyes were on Salah. He did what he has always done: he contributed. A neat assist for Curtis Jones’ opener in the second half gave Anfield something to cling to, a glimpse of the old rhythm between star and stadium.

The lead lasted six minutes.

Kevin Schade’s header dragged Brentford level and summed up Liverpool’s year in a single moment: control briefly seized, then surrendered with alarming ease.

The title defence had been like that for months. Promising positions, fleeting control, then points spilled away. The 1-1 felt less like a finale and more like a snapshot of a season that never quite settled.

Brentford’s step forward

For Brentford, the stakes were different. A win would have delivered a first-ever European campaign. They did not get it, but Keith Andrews still left Anfield talking about progress, not regret.

"It shows we are a good football club," the head coach said after a ninth-place finish. Two consecutive top-half campaigns for a club of Brentford’s size and resources is no small feat.

"It never should be taken for granted finishing in the top half, you could ask a lot of clubs dotted around the Championship who possibly got ahead of themselves," he added. "The fact we have been able to do that two years in a row is pretty special."

While Liverpool wrestled with what went wrong, Brentford quietly underlined what can go right with clear planning and steady growth.

What comes next for Slot?

Slot will lead Liverpool back into the Champions League next season. That matters. It salvages something tangible from a bruising campaign and keeps the club in the competition it considers its natural habitat.

But the questions will not fade with the summer sun.

Could Salah’s situation have been handled differently? Should Ngumoha have been trusted earlier? Did loyalty to certain names cost Liverpool points they could not afford to drop?

Slot has already accepted his part in it. He has also made one thing clear: every call, right or wrong, came from conviction, not chaos.

Next season, conviction alone will not be enough. Liverpool expect a title challenge, not a post-mortem.