Arne Slot is not immune to pressure or scrutiny, but Liverpool supporters should give him the opportunity to deliver on his brief, writes Michael Holt, a season ticket holder of 34 years.
Let’s get something straight: seven wins from 21 league games is not good enough. Six in 20 was verging on relegation form. Is the tide rising, and are we now in the end times for Arne Slot?
Football is a results business. In modern football there is little patience when a club is in transition, and there is even less acceptance of a poor run of results.
Supporters can’t be expected to believe that this is just a blip, and we won’t be cajoled into accepting defeats dressed up as something they are not.
In his ill-fated reign, Roy Hodgson tried to lower the expectations of fans, framing defeats as “competitive” and for us not to be “too big” for a relegation fight.
It was unsurprising that the supporters bristled with discontent and, consequently, Hodgson didn’t last long.
There is a line; when a head coach crosses into revisionism or appears to deflect responsibility while failing to publicly back his players, he invites criticism.
Slot has not helped himself at times with his words, and that deserves to be said plainly.
Arne Slot’s responsibility: Results vs. transition
However, what football currently lacks is the acknowledgement of context and seeing the bigger picture before rushing to a decision.
We shouldn’t be looking for blame necessarily, and it is certainly not about making excuses. It is about understanding responsibility.
In a world where whoever shouts loudest gets heard and where ‘my facts’ are considered as ‘truth’, can we take a moment and look at the context to ask, ‘What do you think?’
Slot acknowledged that it is not good enough, he said: “The players know what the standards of Liverpool mean and we aren’t performing to those standards. They feel that disappointment.”
| Metric (All Competitions) | 2024/25 Season (Champions) | 2025/26 Season (Current) |
|---|---|---|
| Total Wins | 38 | 20 |
| Total Draws | 9 | 7 |
| Total Losses | 9 | 11 |
| Win Percentage | 67.9% | 52.6% |
| Goals Scored | 123 | 69 |
*All-competition stats correct as of February 13, 2026. This season’s figures reflect the 38 games played to date across PL, CL, domestic cups and Community Shield.
But performance and results must also be viewed in light of the unprecedented tragedy of Diogo Jota, for which the club and players are navigating every day.
From a footballing perspective, this too would have undoubtedly changed the complexion of its transfer policy (not even mentioning the tragedy of his death impacting his close friends in the squad).
We can’t know how the team is faring with this situation, nor can we understand the impact it makes on performance. None of the players owe a public explanation of how it’s impacted them, but we owe them the respect of acknowledging it’s really hard to be at your best when trying to deal with that.
Arne Slot: Head coach, not manager in new era
Let’s remember that Arne Slot is head coach in Liverpool’s organisational structure, with Richard Hughes and Michael Edwards controlling recruitment, contracts, and long-term squad planning.
That relationship has been rightly discussed already – but it can’t then be ignored when discussing Slot’s performance.
The squad has undergone/is undergoing a scale of overhaul rarely seen at Liverpool in such a short space of time.
Transitions of this scale are never going to be smooth. But the summer spending is used as a stick to beat Slot with, but are there holes in the transfer strategy used by Hughes and Edwards?
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“The players know what the standards of Liverpool mean and we aren’t performing to those standards. They feel that disappointment.”
Did we do too much all at once? We didn’t provide cover at right back, and we have not considered the phasing out of legendary players in Mo Salah, Andy Robertson, Virgil van Dijk and Alisson.
They are all ageing, and was there value for money in giving contracts to Salah and Virgil? Was this Slot’s decision? Salah has gone from cornerstone to cog, that is a decision from Slot, but it seems to be for the long-term evolution of the club. But this again points to the hierarchy.
Was the decision not to buy Marc Guehi earlier in the summer or to find an alternative a mistake and halted any tactical shift? The injury to Giovanni Leoni probably didn’t help matters either. Selling Jarell Quansah without adequate replacement is not a failure of coaching, but it does suggest a transfer strategy that was trying too much.
Is Slot having to manage the Salah situation on his own? Managing the fading of a club legend is one of the hardest jobs in football, just ask Brendan Rodgers about Steven Gerrard.
Salah’s drop-off this season is visible and measurable, and it places the head coach in an impossible situation to either play him and be accused of player power picking the team, or manage him and be accused of disrespect.
Fading forces are one thing, but then there is the inexplicable drop in form of players like Alexis Mac Allister, who has gone from energetic to lethargic. There are factors that we simply can’t know about from the stands.
Tactically, this is not the same Liverpool that Jurgen Klopp managed. Clearly Slot isn’t Klopp and doesn’t try to be. He is not as charismatic, cool or theatrical on the line.
Slot knew he inherited a squad with talent capable of competing, but he was given the chance to manage us because he had a long-term plan to shape the team in his image.
It is also worth acknowledging how Klopp’s Liverpool has shaped our expectations. The near-perfection 97-point seasons, our relentlessness, meant we came to take for granted the idea that Liverpool should win every week.
But that landscape has changed, and even Pep Guardiola’s Man City have stepped off that pace.
Liverpool won the league last year with a much lower points tally, and Arsenal are likely to do something similar this season. The landscape has shifted. We can’t expect perfection. That isn’t lowering the bar, but it is the reality for the league more broadly.
Slot has not scrapped Klopp’s ideas, but he has moulded them. The high press is not so evident; the 4-3-3 shape is a more conservative 4-2-3-1, and the buildup is meant to be more controlled.
Was Slot’s brief when he agreed to take the job that he had to evolve the team as players aged and left?
Liverpool 3.0: Managing the post-Klopp evolution
Are we watching evolution in real time?
The purchase of aggressive, attack-minded full-backs in Milos Kerkez and Jeremie Frimpong points toward a system that could eventually use wing-backs rather than full-backs.
Will we shift formation towards a 3-4-3 or 3-5-2? Would this setup help Florian Wirtz play off Hugo Ekitike and Alexander Isak and accommodate a midfield of Dominik Szoboszlai, Ryan Gravenberch and Mac Allister, so they can operate more as a midfield trio and not be overloaded and less prone to the counter?
Don’t forget there were dark times under Klopp.
No one can forget the miserable run as defending champions in 2021. Klopp was able to raise the players and achieve a third-place finish.
This is Slot’s task now: can he motivate the team to make the best of a bad situation? He doesn’t seem to have lost the ability to get a performance from his players – the Sunderland result is evidence of this.
Across several recent performances, we have seen a team responding to his halftime team talks or changes; wins against Newcastle and Marseille showed sparks of light in the doom and gloom.
Despite winning the league last season, Slot shouldn’t be immune from pressure. Results must improve. Individual mistakes must be stopped. Champions League must be secured.
This is our club’s bread and butter. Our DNA is for challenging at the very top.
We have been blessed with great moments over the last 10 years, but things change. We must evolve. Liverpool have done this before.
Klopp’s first squad were Liverpool 1.0, and with the arrival of Alisson, Van Dijk, and Salah, we saw Liverpool 2.0.
With Wirtz, Ekitike, Szoboszlai, Isak and Frimpong, we are seeing Liverpool 3.0.
Yes, there will be bumps in the road. But we should give Slot the opportunity to deliver on his brief. There are mitigating factors in performances that can’t be brushed aside simply as excuses.
The final league position may force the hand of the club in the summer, but for now, we should be supportive of the man who gave us number 20.
This piece was written by Michael Holt, a long-time This Is Anfield reader, Liverpudlian and season ticket holder of 34 years.