Seven months ago, Arne Slot was on the Anfield pitch with a Premier League trophy in his hands and a city convinced it had found the perfect successor to Jürgen Klopp. Liverpool had just cruised to a record-equalling 20th English title, wrapping it up with four games to spare and demolishing Spurs on the day the crown was confirmed. Now they’re living through their worst run of results since the 1950s, with nine defeats in 12 games, three straight losses by three-goal margins, and a fanbase openly questioning both the manager and the club’s direction. This is the story of how the defending champions got here – from last season’s high, through a blockbuster summer, to a “perfect” start that never really convinced.
Table of Contents
The High Of Year One
Slot’s first year at Liverpool felt like something out of a film. He walked into a club still emotionally tied to Jürgen Klopp, carrying the weight of a legend on his shoulders, and somehow turned that pressure into fuel. Liverpool didn’t just steady themselves – they surged.
From early autumn, there was a sense that something special was building. Anfield felt loud again, late winners became a habit, and the team found that familiar mix of intensity and belief that has defined Liverpool at their best. As the weeks went by, title talk stopped sounding romantic and started sounding realistic.
By spring, Liverpool had turned the race into a procession. They wrapped up the Premier League with games to spare and did it in style – big wins, dramatic comebacks, and a squad that looked united behind their new manager. When Slot lifted the trophy on the Anfield pitch, it was more than a medal ceremony. It was the moment Liverpool fans let themselves believe they had managed the impossible: a seamless transition from one era-defining manager to the next.
That glowing first season is exactly why this year feels so alarming. When you storm to the title straight away, there’s no appetite for patience. Any dip – let alone a collapse – feels like a betrayal of what everyone thought had been built.
Blockbuster Signings That Are Yet To Click
Winning the league didn’t slow Liverpool down in the market. If anything, it turbo-charged their ambition.
Across the 2025 summer window, Liverpool tore up their usual “smart, medium-priced” model and went full super-club. In came Florian Wirtz for a fee reported around £116m, Jeremie Frimpong to effectively replace Trent Alexander-Arnold, Milos Kerkez as a long-term left-back, and Hugo Ekitike and 18-year-old Giovanni Leoni for more depth.
Deadline day then brought the statement signing: Alexander Isak from Newcastle for a British-record £125m, part of an overall summer outlay of roughly £446m.
On paper, it was everything fans had ever asked for – elite talent layered onto a title-winning core. In practice, it has been a mess:
- Isak has struggled to justify the fee, with reports highlighting his underwhelming output as results have nosedived, scoring only 1 goal in all competitions and struggling with injuries.
- Wirtz has added creativity, but, his instinct to push high has stripped protection from midfield and left Liverpool easier to counter.
- Frimpong and Kerkez have given Liverpool hyper-aggressive full-backs, but that high starting position has made defensive transitions even more chaotic.
By the end of the window, Liverpool had added strengths to all areas of the pitch, and a push to win back-to-back Premier Leagues was almost destiny. Instead, they’re a side that concedes first in 10 of 12 games and can’t keep a clean sheet when it matters.
A “Perfect” Start That Never Felt Secure
The irony is that the title defence actually began perfectly – at least on the surface.
By mid-September, Liverpool had five wins from five in all competitions, with Slot talking about the room for improvement even as the 100% record held. They were the only team to win their first three Premier League games, beating Bournemouth, Newcastle and Arsenal.
But underneath the scorelines, the warning signs were flashing:
- Liverpool conceded four goals in their first three league matches – more than they had allowed in the opening eight games of their title-winning campaign.
- The addition of Wirtz shifted the midfield balance, leaving more space between the lines and exposing the centre-backs in transition.
- Games descended into chaos rather than controlled domination; they looked to be one of the most entertaining but most chaotic sides in the league.
When the first punch landed, it did so in familiar fashion. Crystal Palace – unbeaten themselves – beat Liverpool late at Selhurst Park, with Eddie Nketiah punishing yet more slack defending after the champions had almost escaped with an undeserved point. However, a heartbreaking 90+7-minute winner for Palace started a nightmare run for the Reds.
From Champions To Crisis – Where It’s All Gone Wrong
Since the October international break, Liverpool’s season has fallen off a cliff. What had been a slightly nervous but winning title defence turned into a run of heavy defeats: Crystal Palace snatching a late winner at Anfield, comfortably beaten by Manchester City, turned over 3–0 by Nottingham Forest at Anfield, and then humiliated 4–1 by PSV in the Champions League. That PSV game – ninth loss in 12, a third straight defeat by three goals – felt like the night the crisis became impossible to ignore, with Anfield emptying early and booing at full-time.
The worrying part is who has been at the centre of it. Virgil van Dijk, rock-solid last season, has been involved in several of the key errors, including the handball that started PSV’s comeback. Mohamed Salah is still scoring, but no longer looks capable of dragging every game back on his own. Record signing Alexander Isak has just one goal and has been widely criticised for looking off the pace after arriving late and undercooked. Around them, the team has looked flat, short on confidence and miles away from the ruthless champions of a few months ago.
Arne Slot has described the form as “ridiculous” and says he feels “guilty”, while insisting he is still backed by the owners. Legends like Steven Gerrard have stopped short of calling for his head but are clear that he “needs answers quickly”. Since October, Liverpool’s story has been brutally simple: big games lost heavily, big players out of form, and a title defence that has gone from shaky to historically bad in a matter of weeks.
Recent Form
How Much Is On Slot – And How He Can Turn It Around
There’s no way of talking about Liverpool’s slide without putting Arne Slot at the centre of it. He picked the team, signed off on the big-money recruits and set the style that has gone from exhilarating to chaotic. The title defence hasn’t just dipped – it’s collapsed – and at a club of Liverpool’s size the manager always carries a huge share of that responsibility. The substitutions have sometimes felt panicked, the line-ups unsettled, and the balance between attack and control badly off.
At the same time, Slot isn’t working with a blank slate. He’s managing the emotional hangover of a title win, the shock of losing Diogo Jota – both a dressing-room favourite and a proven big-game scorer – and a squad that has been reshaped in one aggressive summer. Several senior players are badly out of form, and the new signings haven’t settled as quickly as expected. The same coach showed last season that he can organise, motivate and improve this group, which is why, for now, he still has credit in the bank with many fans and, crucially, with the owners.
If he’s going to turn it around, the path is pretty clear. He has to strip things back, settle on a core XI and rebuild the defensive foundations that made Liverpool so hard to beat last year. That probably means making some ruthless calls on out-of-form stars and expensive new signings, even if it hurts in the short term. He needs to simplify the game plan, stop the constant reshuffles and give key players like Van Dijk and Salah a clearer structure to lean on, while using Jota’s absence as a unifying motivation rather than a weight. Above all, he has to change the mood: restore belief on the training ground, stop the feeling of panic in the stadium, and turn Liverpool back into a team that expects to win tight games rather than fears the worst.
Whether he can do all that will decide if this season becomes a blip in a successful era – or the moment his Anfield story starts to close.
The Month Ahead: A Defining Period For Slot And Liverpool
The next few weeks are loaded with games that will shape both Liverpool’s season and Arne Slot’s future. After the PSV defeat on 26 November, they go to West Ham on 29 November, then face Sunderland at Anfield on 3 December and Leeds away on 6 December – three league matches where anything less than a strong points haul will turn the volume up again. A huge Champions League trip to Inter on 9 December follows, before Brighton at home on the 13th, Tottenham away on the 20th and Wolves at Anfield on the 27th, with Leeds visiting Anfield again on 30 December to round out the year.
These aren’t just fixtures, they’re effectively job reviews. Premier League history shows how quickly things can turn on a title-winning manager: Claudio Ranieri was sacked by Leicester less than a year after their miracle win, José Mourinho was removed by Chelsea within months of lifting the 2014–15 trophy, and Manuel Pellegrini’s departure from Manchester City was confirmed while he was still in charge of a recent champion side. If Slot can use this run to stabilise results and performances, he strengthens his position; if the slide continues through these games, this stretch could be remembered as the point the club seriously started to consider a post-Slot future.
Will Slot Stay Or Go?
Personally, I still believe Slot will turn it around. The scale of this slump is ugly, but it’s also arriving off the back of a title-winning season that proved he can organise and inspire this squad over the long haul. A lot of what’s gone wrong feels fixable: confidence has dipped, key players are underperforming at the same time, and the new signings haven’t settled – all serious problems, but not permanent ones. Give him a bit of breathing space, a settled XI, and a run of results to rebuild belief, and I think Liverpool will start to look like themselves again. It might not be enough to save this title defence, but I’m convinced Slot still has enough credit, ideas and authority to get Liverpool back on track.
