Liverpool announced the exit of Arne Slot on Saturday following an end-of-season review, bringing a premature end to the tenure of a title-winning manager.
Football is a cruel game, the old adage goes.
One year you’re looking at your own reflection in the Premier League trophy. The next, that same reflection is peering back at you from the window of the job centre.
Football’s cruelties come in many forms – disallowed goals, painful deflections, conceding last minutes winners. Unfortunately for Arne Slot, the latter of those featured as just one commonplace issue in a growing list of monthly mishaps.
LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND - Saturday, April 25, 2026: Liverpool's head coach Arne Slot before the FA Premier League match between Liverpool FC and Crystal Palace FC at Anfield. (Photo by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)
Liverpool lost their way under the Dutchman, just 12 months on from winning the Premier League title under his leadership, and sadly the ultimate price was paid.
Slot departs Liverpool under something resembling an emotional cloud, a good man whose position at the Anfield helm became eventually untenable.
A lingering sadness
LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND - JULY 08: Arne Slot, head coach and his wife paying tribute to Diogo Jota at Anfield on July 08, 2025 in Liverpool, England. The Liverpool player and Portugal international Diogo Jota, 28, was killed in a car crash on July 03 in Zamora, Spain. He was travelling with his brother Andre Silva before returning to the UK for the start of the Premier League season. (Photo by Nikki Dyer - LFC/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
The last thing any supporter needs right now is a recap of tragic and entirely unexpected events which unfolded on the eve of the Premier League season last summer, but it cannot be skirted over that Liverpool – the players, coaching staff and everyone connected to the club – were up against it from day one.
Just a month prior, Liverpool had paraded through the winding streets of the city, under the shadow of the Liver Building swathed in a constant cacophony of noise, the sulphur of flares thick in the air.
It didn’t matter that the May bank holiday weekend had brought a dreary grey sky and chilling winds, this was a day for red hot celebration. As the coach accommodating the first team and the gleaming Premier League trophy nudged its way past the city’s main bus station on The Strand, Slot’s eyes lit up and he took out his mobile phone.
At the parade last May I noticed Slot taking out his phone in disbelief after seeing the packed roofs of the bus station on the Strand. A little personal moment, collecting his own slice of posteriority on a historic day. He played a huge role in making that history happen. pic.twitter.com/UuIhpv7tvB
— Danny Gallagher (@Danny7Gallagher) May 30, 2026
The Liverpool manager had spotted the tops of the various bus shelters, each teeming with fans. How they had got up there, nobody was sure.
How their collective weight was being supported, again nobody knew. Slot took a video for posterity, a little keepsake for himself, something unique from what was being captured from all angles by LFCTV and a plethora of other broadcasters.
That iphone video is now just one of the many things Slot takes away from his time with Liverpool. Something to look back at, along with his Premier League winner’s medal. There will be a lingering sadness for some time, the manner in which this all came to be. Something that would have seemed so inconceivable one year ago is now very much today’s reality.
The writing was on the wall
LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND - Saturday, April 25, 2026: Liverpool's Mohamed Salah complains about his hamstring to head coach Arne Slot (L) as he is substituted off during the FA Premier League match between Liverpool FC and Crystal Palace FC at Anfield. (Photo by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)
There is however no getting away from the fact that this moment felt like it was coming, growing momentum for quite some considerable period.
By the time Liverpool chiefs, led by Michael Edwards and Richards Hughes, conducted their end-of-season review, the snowball effect behind the prospect of sacking Slot must have felt rather seismic.
Fan sentiment had all but soured and dried up. There was goodwill in the bank, sure, but it was rapidly beginning to feel like rose-tinted legacy fantasising.
There is to be absolutely no doubt that Slot had been dealt a bad hand this season. Two players he managed to extract a considerable amount from last year, Luis Diaz and Darwin Nunez, were promptly sold in deals which the club’s money handlers deemed too good to turn down.
Slot was therefore stripped of two dynamic forwards, both press resistant in possession and hard workers off the ball, each able to play wide and central in the forward line if needed. Look at any previous Slot team, AZ or Feyenoord particularly, and you will notice how crucial high octane wide men are to his approach.
LONDON, ENGLAND - Thursday, January 8, 2026: (L-R) Liverpool's head coach Arne Slot and Florian Wirtz exchange words after the FA Premier League match between Arsenal FC and Liverpool FC at the Emirates Stadium. (Photo by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)
And so, with two big personalities and key profiles gone, Slot was tasked with bedding in new big money signings Hugo Ekitike and Florian Wirtz. Two world-leading talents who could well go on to be two of the best on the planet in years to come, but integrating them into a new frontline, recently purged and dealing with grief, was no easy task.
On top of this, Liverpool shelled a British record £125m on Alexander Isak who did not have a drop of match fitness, to put expectations at an all-time sky high. To the outsiders it wasn’t a question of whether Liverpool would win the title again, but a case of how soon in the season.
Slot knew otherwise, with many plates to spin and new equations to think through. The campaign may have got off to winning ways for Liverpool, for five games straight, but not for anything could a drop of balance be bought.
Liverpool defeated Arsenal and got an early Merseyside derby win under their belt, but the Reds looked wayward, misaligned, searching for something they couldn’t provide.
Naturally, the wheels came off. Liverpool crumbled in late September, the boxer who had taken one stray punch too many lost his legs. Defeat away to Crystal Palace triggered a run of four straight league defeats, a home loss to a below average Manchester United and a miserable European loss to a comically bad Galatasaray side.
It all arrived much sooner than many could have predicted. A phase of fleeting stability littered with draws would follow, through Christmas and into the new year. But, from that point onward, the writing was on the wall.
Liverpool showed no signs of response
MANCHESTER, ENGLAND - Sunday, May 3, 2026: Liverpool's head coach Arne Slot after the FA Premier League match between Manchester United FC and Liverpool FC at Old Trafford. Manchester United won 3-2. (Photo by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)
An enduring takeaway from the season, and something Slot will likely eternally be asked about, is Liverpool’s inability to grasp onto something that worked. Anything, tangible and repeatable.
In his final press conference as Liverpool manager, before his dismissal, Slot said the word he would use to sum up the season was ‘injuries.’ He was right, the season was plagued by them. But this simply refuses to look at the wider picture.
Despite constantly dwindling numbers, Liverpool’s main issue wasn’t that they didn’t have the personnel available to win games – it was that they didn’t know how they were going to go about winning a game, regardless of which personnel are playing.
It’s all fine and well having some of the best players in Europe in your starting XI, but if you load them into a formation with the main selling point being our lads are better than yours, that’s not going to cut the mustard.
LONDON, ENGLAND - Saturday, December 20, 2025: Tottenham Hotspur's captain Cristian Romero is held back from speaking to referee John Brooks whilst Liverpool's captain Virgil van Dijk holds him back during the FA Premier League match between Tottenham Hotspur FC and Liverpool FC at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. (Photo by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)
Liverpool had matches in which both Wirtz and Ekitike looked to be clicking nicely together, but likewise they had plenty in which these two prospects seemed like they hardly knew one another.
Whether this is solely down to the manager and his failure in applying an unwavering model, or whether it’s the highly paid footballers not entirely putting their foot on the gas to do things they perhaps do not want to do for a struggling head coach, we’ll never truly know.
By choosing the word ‘injuries’ however, what Slot was effectively telling the crowded room of reporters was; I’ve not had a fair crack of the whip with the players in my squad and the various new factors we have to take on board, next season will be better.
Next season, however, will not come.
An untenable position as rivals made ground
BOURNEMOUTH, ENGLAND - Saturday, January 24, 2026: Liverpool's head coach Arne Slot (L) and Bournemouth's manager Andoni Iraola before the FA Premier League match between Bournemouth AFC and Liverpool FC at Dean Court. (Photo by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)
Match-going Liverpool fans stuck with Slot for a long as possible, for the most part.
When social media unrest began to crackle, as it so often prematurely does, towards the middle of October, the Kop continued to chant the name of the manager loud and proud, home and away.
Liverpool isn’t a club that turns on its own. It had been five months since Slot hoisted the Premier League trophy inside the stadium, just 12 months on from Jurgen Klopp bellowing his name into a microphone during his own farewell party.
It was a time for togetherness and turning things around. But, for that to happen, things have to work both ways. Slot thanked the fans and echoed his belief that the players needed to take their chances, be more ruthless and less unfortunate in key moments.
It didn’t materialise. A handful of scraped draws, infrequently sprinkled with a win and then a series of poor defeats, would become the repeating pattern.
Better performances in Europe often handed a vague glimmer of credence to Slot’s theory that the murky tactics of the Premier League were holding Liverpool back, but then all too soon we saw the likes of Andoni Iraola – the leading frontrunner to become new Reds boss – and his Bournemouth side picking up points and victories regardless, with considerably inferior weaponry.
From early February to mid-March Liverpool strung together an important series of results, beating the likes of in-form Sunderland and Brighton, before inflicting revenge over Nottingham Forest and then battering West Ham 5-2 at home.
PARIS, FRANCE - Wednesday, April 8, 2026: Liverpool's head coach Arne Slot and Florian Wirtz after the UEFA Champions League Quarter-Final 1st Leg match between Paris Saint-Germain FC and Liverpool FC at the Parc des Princes. The game ended 2-0. (Photo by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)
This period saw the summer signings flourish somewhat, beginning to brim with confidence. Liverpool were still far from a force, but possible green shoots were there. That is, until they weren’t.
The false confidence led Liverpool into facing Tottenham at home. Categorically the most out of form team in the league, heading towards shock relegation with a clueless interim manager who could not so much as buy a point. At home, therefore, of course Liverpool would squander a late goal to gift a 1-1 draw, before Igor Tudor was unceremoniously sacked. For the first time, reactionary boos rang out.
It was damning and, most concerning, it was to be permanent. Liverpool would lose to Brighton, be hammered by Man City 4-0 in the FA Cup and then be turfed out of the Champions League to PSG, over two legs which nobody truly believed the Reds would emerge victorious from.
All chances of silverware gone within weeks. The damage limitation period had begun. A solid end to the season may likely have saved Slot, and European qualification did appear that it had. But the powers that be had clearly interpreted the data more carefully.
After snatching the derby at the Hill Dickinson stadium in the final seconds of ten minutes added on, Liverpool would win only once more, against Palace.
LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND - Sunday, April 19, 2026: Liverpool players celebrate with goal-scorer Mohamed Salah after the opening goal during the FA Premier League match between Everton FC and Liverpool FC, the 248th Merseyside Derby, at Bramley-Moore Dock. Liverpool won 2-1. (Photo by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)
Defeat to United, a humiliating season double, and another boo-inducing late draw against Chelsea was the death knoll for Slot. Beaten handsomely by Aston Villa and drawing on the final day to Brentford would finally get a miserable season over with.
FSG have been here before. In the summer of 2015 they stuck with Brendan Rodgers after a poor campaign, which saw club legend Steven Gerrard depart and the Reds battered 6-1 on the final day of the season to Stoke City. Fans were in disarray.
Rodgers remained, he couldn’t turn things around, and was axed by October. All things pointed to this, very possibly, happening with Slot in the months ahead. History has a habit of repeating itself.
Slot would not have deserved that. The Dutchman is a Premier League champion, part of a very select bunch of managers on the banner on the Kop to have won major honours, and he will be immortalised upon that forever more.
For one brilliant debut season he made Liverpool the toast of their peers, better than all the rest and the most in-form team in Europe, denied progression in the Champions League only by the eventual winners.
It’s a sad ending to a short and briefly beautiful tale.