What could go wrong has gone wrong for Arne Slot - he deserves a crack at another season

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When Dominik Szoboszlai, the club’s outstanding player in the 2025-26 season, slipped ahead of Aston Villa’s second goal on Friday night, it was a moment that summed up Liverpool’s ill-fated Premier League title defence. On another night, Szoboszlai might get away with the misstep - after all, Morgan Rogers and Ollie Watkins still had a fair bit to do.

Instead, Rogers clipped a tidy assist to Watkins, whose finish found the corner nicely but was semi-scuffed. In other words, everything that could go wrong for Liverpool, did go wrong for Liverpool.

Everything that could go wrong for Arne Slot, did go wrong for Arne Slot. And that can apply when reviewing his season.

First things first, Slot tends not to make these sorts of excuses. He gives explanations for bad results - of which there have been plenty over the past nine months - but not excuses.

Anyhow, as the cliche goes, he knows final judgement on the job he is doing will be based on results. And on that basis, he knows he is underperforming in the context of the expectations of all those connected with the club.

But despite those expectations, Liverpool does not have some sort of divine right to be winning trophies every year. They should be able to withstand and rebound from a bad season.

There was a bad season as recently as 2022-23 when Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool finished fifth in the Premier League. They were knocked out of the FA Cup by Brighton in the fourth round and their Champions League hopes were ended by Real Madrid in the round of 16.

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Slot’s Liverpool of 2025-26 are probably going to finish fifth or fourth in the Premier League. They were knocked out of the FA Cup at the quarter-final stage by Manchester City and their Champions League hopes were ended by Paris Saint-Germain in the last eight.

A relatively disappointing campaign can happen. If that relatively disappointing campaign comes because of glaring inadequacies from the manager, his position is untenable.

But Slot has not been glaringly inadequate - he has come off second best in a battle with a series of setbacks. Last summer, he lost Luis Diaz and Trent Alexander-Arnold, whose importance to Liverpool could not be overstated.

On top of that, Mohamed Salah’s form fell off a cliff, and suddenly, the Egyptian’s presence became disruptive rather than inspirational. Salah’s statement about wanting Liverpool to ‘go back to being the heavy metal attacking team’ said more about the player himself than it did about the manager he was throwing under a bus. Salah was hardly heavy metal this season.

Of the expensive new signings, Hugo Ekitike did reasonably well before suffering that terrible Achilles injury just as Alexander Isak was returning from a broken bone in his leg.

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Jeremie Frimpong has already missed more games for Liverpool through injury than he did in four and a half years for Bayer Leverkusen. As the manager himself would doubtless say, these are not excuses for Liverpool’s limp title defence and under-performance in other competitions, but they are explanations.

Slot was given a three-year deal when he joined the club in 2024 and if you had said he would deliver a Premier League title in one of those three years, Liverpool fans would probably have been happy. He delivered it in his first year and broke the unprecedented dominance of Manchester City.

Whatever happens in the final days of Premier League fixtures, he at least deserves a crack at righting the wrongs of this season.

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