Having lost five of their 11 Premier League games in 2025-26, defending champions Liverpool are well off the pace already. Can they get back on track over the next few weeks?
Rewind to what feels like the distant past of August 2025, and the fear from rivals that Liverpool would repeat their dominance of last season in the Premier League was palpable.
They eased to the title in 2024-25, before going on an uncharacteristic spending spree over the summer, signing some of the best and brightest talents in Europe as they looked to cement their place at the top of English football.
And as starts to the season go, it could hardly have been better.
After beating Everton in the Merseyside derby on 20 September, Liverpool sat in first place with 15 points following a perfect five wins from five in the Premier League.
Two months later, they sit in eighth place on 18 points after losing five of their last six.
The criticism has been both spiky and plentiful, probably because of just how surprising their drop-off has been. Liverpool were not exactly convincing in their first five wins, but anyone who said they saw this coming was doing so more out of hope than expectation.
That’s not to say difficulties weren’t anticipated. You would have to be stunningly ignorant to think the tragic loss of Diogo Jota in early July wouldn’t have a profound impact on the coaching staff and players who fought and celebrated alongside him last season, and on new arrivals whose introduction to life on Merseyside was overshadowed by mourning and sorrow.
Speaking on Tuesday after Scotland’s dramatic win over Denmark that saw them qualify for next summer’s World Cup, Liverpool vice-captain Andy Robertson told BBC Sport: “I couldn’t get my mate Diogo Jota out of my head today. We spoke so much together about the World Cup… and I know he’ll be somewhere smiling over me tonight. I just couldn’t get him out of my head the whole day, so I was in a bit of trouble in my room earlier, but I think I hid it well from the boys.”
Those heartfelt words showed how difficult at least one of Jota’s former Liverpool teammates found it to keep a clear head going into a game, and that was on international duty. Imagine how much greater that sense of devastation and loss is at club level, where Robertson spent five years playing alongside Jota. Every game is a stark reminder that his mate is no longer there, and many players at Liverpool will be feeling the same. In elite sport where margins are famously paper thin, the impact of a significant emotional blow like that can’t be dismissed.
The 3-0 loss at Manchester City prior to the latest international break was a bad defeat to a rival, but those fine margins reared their head once again. It could have been very different had Virgil van Dijk’s goal – which would have made it 1-1 before half-time – been allowed to stand, as the Premier League’s Key Match Incidents panel said it should.
Pep Guardiola’s side deserved the win and Liverpool did not play well at the Etihad, but it should be remembered that it came just over a week after the Reds enjoyed a solid victory over an in-form Aston Villa and five days on from an impressive 1-0 Champions League win over Real Madrid that, if anything, flattered the Spanish giants.
Viewed in the wider context of the season, though, it was understandable that the loss to City led to questions about the champions’ credentials ramping up several notches.
In fairness, their start in the league has been quite challenging. Of their 11 opponents, only one currently sits in the bottom six (Burnley), while the only team in the bottom half of the table they’ve played at home is Everton.
In fact, of the other nine teams in the top 10 of the Premier League, Liverpool have already played seven of them.
That is not to sugar-coat anything; losing five of their first 11 league games is absolutely a ‘crisis’ in modern football terms, especially when you consider they lost only four in the whole of last season, and two of those came after they won the title and their performances clearly eased off.
But as we looked at earlier this week, Liverpool have a kinder run of fixtures ahead of them on paper, starting with a home game against 19th-placed Nottingham Forest on Saturday. In fact, of their next five games, their only one against a team in the top half is hosting promoted Sunderland on 3 December.
Current position of Liverpool's next nine PL opponents
Slot has plenty of questions to answer. Their improved performances against Villa and Real Madrid were largely credited to the fact he started his favoured midfield three from last season (Ryan Gravenberch, Alexis Mac Allister and Dominik Szoboszlai), but while that does probably remain his strongest trio, they also started four of Liverpool’s five league defeats. The City game perhaps confirmed the widely suggested solution of ‘just play last season’s team’ wasn’t quite the safety net people thought it was.
We recently investigated their fallibility against long balls, so we won’t go through all that again. Partly related to it, though, is Liverpool are seeing plenty of the ball this season. Opponents are seemingly happy to go long, and if that doesn’t work, let them have possession and task them with breaking down a deep defence. Liverpool’s average possession per Premier League game is 60.7%, more than any other team, while their 78% of game time playing against either a medium or low block is the highest in the league.
Premier League block height after MD11 2025-26
That may be where the signing of Florian Wirtz comes in. Slot has been accused of not having a plan for the German, but it seems relatively clear he was brought in to help Liverpool break down those low blocks that became a bigger thorn towards the end of last season. It just hasn’t worked particularly well yet.
A lot of pressure comes with a price tag of £100 million (potentially rising to £116m), and the fact Wirtz is yet to record a goal or assist in the Premier League hasn’t helped matters. He has performed very well in the Champions League, but that hasn’t yet translated to England’s top flight.
Wirtz has created 4.2 open-play chances per 90 in Europe, but just 1.7 in the Premier League. He has created 1.3 big chances per 90 in the UCL, but just 0.1 in the league, while he averages 0.55 expected assists in the Champions League, which is down at 0.15 in the PL.
The 22-year-old can do a lot more, and his two assists for Germany against Slovakia on Monday will hopefully give him the confidence to make an impact in the Premier League over the coming weeks.
There is also the other nine-figure acquisition in the summer to consider, as Alexander Isak nears a return to action. The Swede is another puzzle Slot hasn’t yet solved, but Isak can unquestionably offer plenty once he gets up and running. Liverpool have a non-penalty shot conversion rate of just 15.3% in the Premier League this season. Isak had a non-pen shot conversion rate of 26.4% in the league last season, so getting anywhere near that should at least help matters.
The former Newcastle United man will have his work cut out getting into the team, though, as a rare success story at Anfield this season has been the form of Hugo Ekitiké. The Frenchman is Liverpool’s top scorer in all competitions with six goals, though Slot has said he can play him and Isak together, as he did in the 5-1 win at Eintracht Frankfurt.
Ekitiké showed how well he can work with another striker with his impressive first goal for France against Ukraine during the international break, linking with Kylian Mbappé superbly.
While Ekitiké has largely shone, his teammates are generally not firing well enough in front of goal. Liverpool averaged 2.3 goals per game on their way to the Premier League title last season, but that’s down to 1.6 after 11 games in 2025-26.
Only Chelsea (37), Man City (34) and Crystal Palace (34) have created more big chances than Liverpool (33), but only Aston Villa (20%) and Leeds United (22.7%) have a worse conversion rate of such opportunities than the Reds (27.3%). Last season, they comfortably created the most big chances in the league (150, at least 30 more than any other team), with a 38.7% conversion rate.
That’s the attack, and defensively, Liverpool also haven’t been up to snuff. They’ve conceded 17 goals in the Premier League; only seven teams have allowed more, while just eight have faced more shots on target (46), and eight have a lower xG against (13.9).
Perhaps more alarmingly, only Burnley (34) and West Ham (32) have allowed more big chances against than Liverpool (29). Compare that to last season when only Arsenal (58) and Nottingham Forest (73) allowed fewer big chances than the Reds (75).
That could partly explain why they have struggled to go ahead and stay ahead in games this season. Liverpool have conceded the first goal in eight of their last 10 outings in all competitions and have lost every Premier League match in which they’ve trailed at any point this season.
As mentioned in our recent article on game states in the Premier League, Liverpool have held a lead for comparatively few minutes in 2025-26. Only seven teams have been ahead for a lower percentage of their games than Slot’s side (24.1% – 269 mins, 35 secs). Even rivals Everton have been ahead for longer (27.7% – 303 mins, 37 secs).
Premier League game state Nov 2025
That is quite a drop from leading for the longest time last season (45.6%) on their way to winning the Premier League title.
Liverpool have been behind for 36.9% of their game time (413 mins, 4 secs); only West Ham (47%) and Wolves (57.8%) have been losing for a greater percentage of their matches. Even 17th-placed Burnley (36.4%) and 19th-placed Forest (32%) have had less time in a losing position than the Reds across their first 11 games.
That’s particularly significant when you consider they were only behind for 615 mins, 1 sec in the whole of last season, a total they’re already three quarters of the way to just 11 games into this term.
There is some cause for optimism, though. Liverpool were generally winning games early last season, but some of their underlying numbers dipped a little after a strong start. However, as you can see from the graphic below measuring xG for and against on a rolling six-game average, they improved markedly after around 11 games, and Slot will hope the same happens this season.
Liverpool non-pen rolling xG since start of 2024-25
There is plenty for Slot and his players to fix, but the time is now for them to put their recent form behind them and get back to winning regularly. That will be easier said than done with the eyes of the world on them, the ongoing mourning of Jota, and in a league where the style of play has changed so drastically in such a short space of time. But ultimately, quality usually shines through.
Liverpool must remind the rest why they were so frightened in August.
Premier League Stats Opta
Subscribe to our football newsletter to receive exclusive weekly content. You should also follow our social accounts over onX, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.******