Liverpool's Season at a Crossroads: Slot's Future in Question
The mood around Anfield has curdled. What began as a bold new era under Arne Slot now feels like a season grinding towards an uncomfortable reckoning.
After Liverpool’s limp Champions League quarter-final exit to Paris Saint-Germain – two identical 2-0 defeats, home and away – the narrative hardened quickly. The FA Cup humiliation, a 4-0 loss at Manchester City in early April, had already set the tone. “Slot is sleepwalking towards the sacking,” declared the Daily Mail, capturing the sense of drift that has crept into the club’s campaign.
Inside Liverpool, though, the view is very different.
Board backs Slot amid growing noise
According to David Ornstein, the club’s hierarchy remains firmly behind Slot and the long-term project they sold him when he arrived in 2024 to succeed Jürgen Klopp. His contract runs until 2027 and, crucially, that backing is said to stand regardless of whether Liverpool claw their way to a top-four finish or not.
That is no small caveat. Liverpool sit fifth, clinging to the new Champions League lifeline the Premier League has secured via a fifth berth. Their cushion over sixth-placed Chelsea is just four points, and the calendar offers no comfort.
The run-in is unforgiving. A Merseyside derby at Everton on Sunday. Crystal Palace at Anfield. Then a brutal stretch of three six-pointers: trips to Manchester United and Aston Villa, with Chelsea visiting in between. On the final day, a journey to Brentford, currently seventh and with their own European ambitions simmering.
One bad week, and the table could turn ugly.
From title high to harsh reality
Slot’s Liverpool story did not begin in crisis. Far from it. He walked into the most daunting job in English football – following Klopp – and delivered the league title at the first attempt. His second season opened like a continuation of that surge: five straight league wins, the football sharp, the mood buoyant, the transition seemingly seamless.
Then the gears slipped.
Hopes of retaining the Premier League crown fell away with alarming speed. An early exit from the EFL Cup stripped away one route to silverware. Manchester City slammed another door in the FA Cup. The Champions League became the last remaining stage on which this team could prove it still belonged among Europe’s elite.
PSG answered that question for them. Over 180 minutes, Liverpool never truly looked like they would overturn the French champions. Two matches, two 2-0 defeats, and a campaign that had promised so much in autumn was over by mid-April.
What lingered most from the second leg, though, was not just the result. It was one decision on the team sheet.
Isak gamble sparks fury
Slot opted to start Alexander Isak at centre-forward, despite the Swede having only just returned from a three-month injury lay-off. On the bench sat Mohamed Salah and Cody Gakpo – two of Liverpool’s most reliable European performers in recent seasons.
In a tie of such magnitude, the choice stunned many.
Slot explained his thinking afterwards. He did not want to risk introducing Isak later, potentially for extra time, when fatigue might hit hardest after such a long absence. The plan, as he outlined it, was to manage the striker’s minutes carefully: “Playing him for 45 minutes, checking how he felt at half-time, then adding another five or ten minutes, was an option,” he said. In the end, with Isak largely anonymous in a flat first half, Slot turned to Gakpo at the break.
The logic cut little ice with some former Liverpool players.
Dietmar Hamann, never shy of a verdict, ridiculed the call on Sky. “If he [Isak] hasn’t played for three months and then faces the best team in Europe, he should play,” Hamann said, before taking direct aim at Slot’s explanation about extra time. “Slot doesn’t want to use him because he might not have enough for extra time. I have to say quite honestly: I had the utmost respect for the man, but I’ve never heard of anything like this before. I don’t know if there’s ever been anything like this before. Probably, but not in the Champions League.”
It was a withering assessment, and it landed at a moment when public patience is thinning.
A season on the brink
This is the tension that now defines Liverpool’s spring. A boardroom determined to stay the course with a coach they see as the architect of a long-term rebuild. A fanbase watching results slide, selection calls questioned, and rivals closing in on their Champions League place.
Slot arrived as the man who could modernise Liverpool without tearing up its identity. He has already delivered a title. But in a league where memory is short and pressure constant, the next few weeks will shape how his reign is truly judged.
Everton, United, Chelsea, Villa, Brentford. Five games that will decide whether this season is remembered as a bump in the road of a new era – or the first real crack in it.
