Liverpool currently look firmly headed towards a 60 point season, a total that would make Champions League [qualification for next year nearly inconceivable.](/liverpool-fc-news-coverage/78657/carragher-sees-slot-keeping-job-even-without-champions-league) Coming off last season’s title triumph and a £450M summer spending spree, it’s a result that nobody expected.
While there’s still games to play there’s always hope, of course, but to call 2025-26 difficult would be a massive understatement. From the often dirge-like football on the pitch to the managing of senior stars to tragedy off it, everything about this season has been tough to take.
“By a mile,” was head coach Arne Slot’s response when asked whether this has been his toughest season as a manager. “All the other seasons I have managed, there was mostly only positives. I don’t think that I have ever lost two games in a row—it’s an exception for me.
“I’m not used to it, and I don’t think we feel like we’ve only lost two of our last 17. Now a draw feels like a loss. The players know what the standards of Liverpool mean and that we haven’t been performing to those standards, so I know that they all feel that disappointment.”
That the draws feel like losses is perhaps inevitable, at least when you’re chasing—one point, after all, is a lot closer to none than it is to three. Particularly when you’re trying to make up ground at the top of the table, it’s nearly impossible to do with a series of tied games.
Winning streaks made up of single-point results is the sort of thing clubs fighting to avoid relegation aspire to. Not defending champions struggling to keep pace and watching their Champions League qualification hopes slowly slip. Writ large, they aren’t good enough.
“If we don’t have Champions League football, it’s definitely not been an acceptable season,” Slot added. “When I arrived here and only signed Federico Chiesa, it was after a Europa League season, so that does have an impact on the way this club is run. I am aware of that.”
While in the end Chiesa was the club’s only first team arrival the summer Slot arrived, Liverpool did also push hard to sign—and fully believed they had a £60M deal done for—Bilbao’s Martín Zubimendi. In addition, the club secured Giorgi Mamardashvili on a delayed deal.
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