Another crushing defeat at Anfield dredges up the same old problems as Liverpool lose 2-1 to Manchester City
Arne Slot is overseeing a poor Liverpool season
Arne Slot is overseeing a poor Liverpool season(Image: PA)
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When Dominik Szoboszlai's worldie of a free kick from crashed in off the woodwork to give Liverpool a 1-0 lead over Manchester City in the 74th minute, the post wasn’t the only thing that was rattled.
Indeed, the script had been written five months before when Szoboszlai's similarly unstoppable strike gave the Reds a 1-0 lead to hang onto against Arsenal.
Liverpool are about triumph through adversity, the momentum generated by a raucous atmosphere, the magic moments that come together to create history in spite of everything. This is Anfield - because Anfield is inevitable.
This is why so many opposition players and managers have named the famous ground as the most difficult place to win - the reason why Pep Guardiola had to wait the best part of a decade for three points here in front of fans.
Sunday should have been one of those days. Szoboszlai's swerving free kick was an all-timer to stand alongside the best of Gerrard, Coutinho and the rest.
And Manchester City had been here before.
Pressing home the advantage
Liverpool were underdogs when Pep's side came to Anfield in October 2022, but the game was decided by a single goal - another moment of genius as Mohamed Salah spun away from Joao Cancelo just past the centre circle, sprinting clear to slot past Ederson at the Kop end.
The Reds only managed 24% possession in that second half, but continued driving forward with Trent Alexander-Arnold and Darwin Nunez passing up big chances in stoppage time.
This Liverpool on Sunday, however, were unable - or unwilling - to press home their advantage after going 1-0 up, despite being on top for a solid 20 minutes before scoring.
There were no shots for either side between Szoboszlai's goal on 74' and Bernardo Silva's equaliser on 84', and while the Reds continued to hold onto possession of the ball for a time, caution began to creep in.
In the one sense, City had created nothing of note in the second half, and the spell of possession they had in the lead-up to the equaliser was largely sterile.
But the truth is this City side had their season hanging on the line. There was always going to be a sting in the tail as long as Liverpool gave them chance to find one.
In previous seasons, perhaps Liverpool could have held on. But this season a collapse has felt inevitable at the first sign of adversity. No side in Premier League history has conceded more winners in the 90th minute or later than this season's iteration of Liverpool - and that is inexcusable.
It is also at least in part the result of failing to finish teams off when on top. Liverpool have only won five league games all season by more than a single goal margin, which means more jeopardy in the final stages and more opportunity for opposition sides to capitalise.
Whether it was a managerial instruction to hold what we have, or an instinctive response from the players to protect a slender lead, Arne Slot was too slow to respond to the shift in momentum in the last 10 minutes of normal time against City.
Yet again, Liverpool have paid the price for poor in-game management, and it now threatens to derail the club beyond the confines of this season - no matter how much patience is urged.
Gambling with Champions League risks regression
According to data from Swiss Ramble, Liverpool have already earned £84 million from their Champions League campaign just this season - taking into account the starting fee for qualification, performance bonuses and the 'value pillar' - calculated by national media market value combined with coefficient rankings over the last five and ten years.
Missing out on just one season of Champions League football affects these coefficients, which have seen Liverpool earn even more from this season's campaign than league phase-toppers Arsenal, while also wiping out an enormous swathe of revenue for next year's accounts.
Though last summer's record expenditure is understood to leave Liverpool with wriggle room in PSR/SCR caluclations, with the Reds the highest revenue-generating club in the Premier League according to Deloitte, losing out on this revenue stream risks Liverpool falling behind their rivals in terms of financial might and will certainly affect the calibre of player the club is able to target - just at the moment the squad is looking its most imbalanced in years.
And, as things stand, missing out is a distinct possibility. Liverpool have won just one of their last seven Premier League games, and now face a trip to a Sunderland side who haven't lost at home all season.
Sunderland, currently ninth in the league table, were rank outsiders for survival when promoted from the Championship last season, yet have lost a game fewer than Liverpool and would draw level on points with the Reds with a win on Wednesday.
Liverpool have returned to the kind of league form last seen in November, when Nottingham Forest made it two Premier League defeats from three with a 3-0 win at Anfield, and are now closer to the relegation zone (16 points) than to title favourites Arsenal (17 points).
Fifth place may be enough for Champions League qualification this season, but Liverpool are slipping further and further away from Manchester United and Chelsea in fourth and fifth, both of whom have won their last four league games.
Put simply, just as Liverpool have entered the sharp end of the season, when results are needed in the here and now, they are getting worse again.
Historic underperformance
Given the tragic events of last summer, underperformance was always a possibility this season. But it's easily forgotten that almost every outlet tipped Liverpool to retain the league title after the record-breaking spending spree, and the Reds won their first five league matches of the 2025-26 season.
Liverpool have won only six of their 20 Premier League games since then, drawing another six and losing eight for a total of 24 points - just 1.2 points per game - 45.6 points if averaged over an entire season, if you're wondering.
That is a worse points tally than Roy Hodgson accumulated in his ill-fated 20 games in charge of Liverpool, and last season, that points tally would have seen Liverpool finish below Everton in 13th place.
Granted, Roy Hodgson never won the league - far from it - but the difference between the riches Slot has at his disposal compared to the paucity of quality in Hodgson's squad could not be starker.
While it's easy to dismiss this argument - after all, Liverpool did win those first five games, and points on the board are what counts - the warning signs were there from day one of this season.
The first four of those wins were all decided by a one-goal margin, with the winner coming no earlier than the 83rd minute in each one.
That shows some nerve, but it also shows an unsustainable route to winning games that came back to bite Liverpool when they themselves were on the receiving end of a last minute winner against Crystal Palace.
And then Chelsea. Then Manchester United at Anfield. Then Bournemouth away. And now City. It had been 44 seasons since both Manchester clubs won at Anfield in the same season (1981-82), and the last season in which City completed a league double over Liverpool was 1936-37.
All this is to echo the sentiment of the ECHO's own Paul Gorst - the proof is in the pudding, and the fare on offer this season in terms of results has been decidedly sour.
But why have results been so poor? Slot's defenders often point to the churn last summer as if the head coach has no say over transfer decisions.
That is pointedly untrue, with Slot and Richard Hughes explaining as much in the Reds Roundtable discussion posted on YouTube last week.
Transfers are a collaborative process, with no player signed or moved on without Slot's consent, and the manager must therefore take some of the responsibility for the destabilising and imbalancing effect the extent of the overhaul had on a winning squad - however good the incoming players were and are.
More troubling has been the in-game management during some of the poorest results of the season, both from Slot's changes and in decisions made by the players on the pitch.
Earlier in the season, when anything would have done to stop the bleeding, it was the repeated decisions to change shape to accommodate more attackers that squashed momentum when Liverpool were in the ascendency, like Chelsea away, or the dreadful 4-1 defeat at Anfield to PSV Eindhoven when players looked lost as to what their role should be in the final stages.
The most recent defeat to City, though, felt more like a scaled-up version of the final minutes of the 2-2 draw with Fulham at Craven Cottage, in that Liverpool had done the hard work to get in front but handed the initiative to the opposition by backing off.
Whether these decisions are coming from instructions from the head coach or if it is simply a case of players withdrawing into their shells, afraid of making another catastrophic mistake, it is creating and sustaining a self-fulfilling prophecy where Liverpool are time and again the perpetrators of their own downfall.
Taking responsibility
In his ECHO column this week, John Aldridge identified this as a "panic mode" - underlining the effect that repeated hits have had on Liverpool's confidence:
"The goals Arne Slot’s side have conceded late on this season have been largely different," Aldo wrote. "On Sunday it was a penalty, at Fulham it was a long-range screamer, at Bournemouth a goalmouth scramble from a long throw, at Chelsea a counter-attack.
"But what a lot of them have in common is a sense of panic. Of players making rash decisions that were often completely unnecessary. Or a problem with the mindset."
In other words: fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
There is no place for external blame games - Liverpool's standards simply must be higher, and that can only come from accepting responsibility when mistakes are made and doing better next time.
Slot's rant about refereeing decisions was shameful in this context. Fixating on decisions from a reverse fixture in which Liverpool lost 3-0 is absconding from the influence that a head coach could and should have had on the outcome of those games.
Yes, Slot can't make those split-second decisions on the pitch himself, but it is the role of a head coach or manager to foster the mentality required so that players have the tools and the muscle memory to negotiate these situations.
Taking responsibility on the chin once in a while could go some way to earning Slot more respect from supporters who are right to question his tactics, in-game decisions and apparent disinterest in what makes the city of Liverpool, Liverpool supporters and - by extension - Anfield unique.
It should be troubling that the Liverpool boss considered Sunday's showing a "very good physical, mental performance from our players."
Liverpool were competitive, yes, and that is an improvement on the Etihad fixture, but mentally we are only seeing more of the same fragility that has plagued the Reds all season.
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