Liverpool have had a massive fall off in comparison to last season.
This time last year, Reds fans had very different feelings and they could not believe how easily Arne Slot came in and won the league.
But fast forward to now, and nobody can quite get their head around what has happened, with eight losses in their last 11 games showing how far they have dropped off.
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This has led to calls for Slot to be sacked, especially as there are so many issues, but he has not been able to solve any as of yet.
Former manager Sam Allardyce thinks he knows what has gone so wrong, though, and he is absolutely right.
Arne Slot manager / head coach of Liverpool reacts during the Premier League match between Manchester City and Liverpool at Etihad Stadium
Photo by Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images
Liverpool are going through a transition period
Many would have thought that Liverpool’s transition period would have come between Jurgen Klopp leaving and Slot arriving, but that was not the case.
Instead, it appears to have been delayed by a year and has come now, with the amount of new signings showing how much change has occurred.
This is what Allardyce has put it down to, with the Englishman believing that many changes are hard to manage for anyone.
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“Transition. I think that this is a case of too much transition in one go,” he said on the No Tippy Tappy Podcast.
“So you got the opposite last year when everything went, well, Liverpool will have no chance of winning the league.
“They’ve only signed one player and Arne Slot coming in with a team that’s familiar with itself, that knows itself, that knows themselves individually and collectively, they’d just be aware, they’d just be aware of the manager and what he wants to change and what he wants to do. And he did that magnificently well.
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“He made them a little bit more difficult to beat, I think. Not as, perhaps as up and at them as Jurgen Klopp, but they won the league and won the league comfortably, so it’s all marks to them. And now they are under transition, and he has asked for that transition to happen.
“The amount of money that’s available to Liverpool on the basis of what they’ve built up over the years, particularly last year, only signing one player.
“It meant there was a big pot there, and they went into the market by signing quality players.
“I think that the integration of a player is very difficult. And integration of many players is very, very difficult.”
No manager could change things right now
So much change has occurred in one summer that players need time to integrate like Allardyce said, with there being nothing Slot can really do about this.
There are not many, if any, other managers in the world who could get these players clicking any faster too, with Slot knowing most of them better than anyone else.
All that needs to happen now is for it all to click, but that comes with time, something that in the short term will prove costly, but long term it could be fruitful.
This shows how tough a situation FSG are in when it comes to sacking him, as they might come to regret it, but in all honesty, Liverpool’s form is not all down to Slot himself.
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