Liverpool’s demoralising season can be encapsulated across eight photographs that captured the false excitement, exasperation and the grief that has defined the last nine months.
With Liverpool beginning the season with five consecutive late winners, photos were placed on the wall of their training ground.The idea was simple, remind the players of the moments that would define their campaign.
The assumption was that those moments would be glorious. Trophy lifts. Famous European nights. Premier League title celebrations.
It was clear from the outset that this was not supposed to be a transitional season. Liverpool tied Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk down to new contracts and then backed that up with the signings of Florian Wirtz, Hugo Ekitike, Jeremie Frimpong and Milos Kerkez.
The message was obvious, this was a team built to win. Instead, these are the photographs that defined Liverpool’s season.
The first match without Diogo
LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND - Friday, August 15, 2025: Liverpool's Mohamed Salah overcome with emotion after the final whistle during the FA Premier League match between Liverpool FC and AFC Bournemouth at Anfield. (Photo by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)
The opening night of the season was the first time the Liverpool players were back at Anfield after the death of Diogo Jota. The emotional toll of the summer was all too visible on the pitch.
Football didn’t matter, except it did it’s the most important of unimportant things.
Death is one of the certainties of life, but when someone is taken so young and so abruptly, it’s much more difficult to comprehend. That was clear to see as the players walked out before kick-off, in the 20th-minute tributes when the fans began to sing Diogo’s name, and throughout the match as Liverpool failed to control the occasion.
It was a rollercoaster of emotions and a rollercoaster of a match, but we all put it down to the weight of the night.
The football and the structure of the team were analysed less. Looking back now, perhaps they should have been.
Conceding the Carabao Cup
LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND - Wednesday, October 29, 2025: Liverpool's head coach Arne Slot during the Football League Cup 4th Round match between Liverpool FC and Crystal Palace FC at Anfield. (Photo by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)
Liverpool won the first seven competitive games in all competitions, which masked the deep structural problems.
We all thought, as supporters, that this was a bedding-in process, a hangover from the summer, and that it would all get better.
But Liverpool’s problems were plain to see. They then suffered four straight Premier League defeats, which would have been unthinkable if you had gone back to the opening night of the season.
Despite that, with hindsight, it still was not as bad as it felt at the time. There was no need for Liverpool to lose their composure or their heads.
But for me, this is why the Carabao Cup loss was one of the defining moments of the season.
The photograph is not really Crystal Palace celebrating at Anfield. The photograph is Arne Slot looking stern. For the first time, he effectively told the football world that Liverpool needed to abandon a cup competition because they were in trouble.
Supporters were divided on this, but what is clear is that it was Liverpool’s best chance of silverware, and silverware is important. It makes people feel good. It gives people something to hold on to during a torrid season. It is the best medicine for footballers, reminding them what it feels like to win.
By abandoning the competition and letting Crystal Palace roll into Anfield and do what they wanted, Liverpool sent a message to the players, the supporters and the football world that this was a crisis.
In that moment, the manager’s actions said something very different from what supporters had been telling themselves. Liverpool were not simply going through a difficult spell. Liverpool believed they were in trouble.
A false dawn against Madrid
3D36DF9 Liverpool, UK. 4th Nov, 2025. Alexis Mac Allister of Liverpool celebrates scoring their first goal during the Liverpool vs Real Madrid UEFA Champions League match at Anfield, Liverpool. Picture credit should read: James Baylis/Sportimage Credit: Sportimage Ltd/Alamy Live News
After waving the white flag against Crystal Palace, Arne Slot may have felt vindicated as Liverpool beat high-flying Aston Villa 2-0 at Anfield before hosting Real Madrid and Trent Alexander-Arnold in the Champions League.
They absolutely could not let their former player come to Anfield and win. It was so intense. It was a proper, proper Liverpool European night.
The Reds won the first ball, the second ball and even the third ball. The Kop felt like it kicked every ball, and the scoreline flattered Real Madrid.
If it weren’t for Thibaut Courtois, it could have been five or 6-0. Looking back now, this photograph is not really about Liverpool beating Real Madrid, it is about belief.
For one night, everyone thought Liverpool were back. The problems that had been visible for months suddenly felt solvable. The season felt alive again. Unfortunately, this was not the turning point. It was a false dawn.
A tactically inept nadir
LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND - Wednesday, November 26, 2025: Liverpool's captain Virgil van Dijk reacts to conceeding their third goal during the UEFA Champions League match between Liverpool FC and PSV Eindhoven at Anfield. (Photo by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)
Liverpool were not back. That was clear after a limp defeat against Man City, which may have been accepted if the scoreline and performance had not been so bad.
But to compound the misery came a 3-0 home defeat, after the international break against a struggling Nottingham Forest side.
So the only tonic Liverpool could look forward to at this point was a nice home game against a Dutch side who were not in great shape and who Arne Slot knew very well.
Instead, it turned into one of the most humiliating European nights Liverpool have suffered at Anfield.
To get beaten in that manner, to look so tactically inept, to show so little fight and be beaten so easily, 4-1, was the point in the season when many Liverpool fans had had enough.
An uninspiring unbeaten run
LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND - New Year's Day, Thursday, January 1, 2026: Liverpool's Ryan Gravenberch after the FA Premier League match between Liverpool FC and Leeds United FC at Anfield. (Photo by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)
New Year’s Day may have been one of the most frustrating times watching Liverpool I’ve endured.
Tactically, Slot had made the change against West Ham away from home and started to grind out results, but if we’re all honest, this was the most unconvincing unbeaten run in the history of football.
Despite Liverpool being seven games unbeaten going into New Year’s Day, playing a struggling Leeds team at home felt like the perfect opportunity to put in a performance. We got nothing.
It was the point of the season when I realised Liverpool did not have a kitchen sink to throw at the opposition, which is incredible when you think about the number of last-minute winners we had earlier in the season.
What happened to the kitchen sink? What happened to the fight?
Outclassed by Paris Saint-Germain
LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND - Tuesday, April 14, 2026: Liverpool's head coach Arne Slot reacts during the UEFA Champions League Quarter-Final 2nd Leg match between Liverpool FC and Paris Saint-Germain FC at Anfield. (Photo by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)
Some may argue that this is too harsh, because when you’re facing the European champions, a side that have reached the Champions League final once again and are arguably the best team in football over the past two years, why be so harsh?
But isn’t that the point? We’re Liverpool and we’re supposed to be European royalty.
Twelve months earlier, PSG were the better side against Liverpool, but it still went down to penalties and you could see a world where Liverpool might have gone through.
This time around, the away leg formed one of the most embarrassing football displays you’ll see from Liverpool.
It started with the team sheet, when the manager decided to play five at the back -talk about resignation.
There was no idea of how to score a goal, no pattern of play, no Rafa Benitez or Gerard Houllier-style plan to dog it out and hit them on the break.
Instead, it was a hybrid of nothing. Neither fully defensive nor attacking.
It was passiv, and Liverpool were lucky it was only 2-0. Anyone who knows football knew that Liverpool were light years away from PSG.
Anfield gets toxic
LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND - Saturday, May 9, 2026: Liverpool's head coach Arne Slot reacts during the FA Premier League match between Liverpool FC and Chelsea FC at Anfield. (Photo by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)
The last remaining image had to be this game because it all started in the press conference the day before, when the manager said that Liverpool had to win one game to qualify for the Champions League.
That automatically told me the message was wrong.
This is Liverpool Football Club. If there are three games left in the season, whether the title is gone or not, you want to win three games out of three. If it’s a pre-season friendly, you want to win.
So it comes as no surprise that a team, which has walked around the pitch throughout the season, was not going to fight like dogs to win football matches, and Liverpool ended the season without a victory in the final month.
And then there were the boos. Not for the first time this season, but different this time around, as a manager’s decision was directly booed when Rio Ngumoha left the pitch after 60 minutes.
The manager stated after the game that fans do not always know why these decisions are made, and that might be true. It might even be unfair, but the boos that rang around Anfield at full time made one thing crystal clear: this was not good enough.
Chelsea were on their third manager of the season and could not buy a result, yet they came to Anfield, just as Tottenham had the month before, and made Liverpool look inferior.
That was the pattern of the season. Liverpool have made poor sides look good. Twenty defeats in all competitions are testament to that.
The only photograph that matters
LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND - Friday, August 15, 2025: Liverpool's supporters form a mosaic as they pay tribute to Andre Silva and Diogo Jota, who died in a car accident in July, during the FA Premier League match between Liverpool FC and AFC Bournemouth at Anfield. Liverpool won 4-2. (Photo by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)
We could have stopped with one photograph, that opening night at Anfield against Bournemouth.
In the cold light of day, football didn’t get any better than that night. Liverpool won the game and went top of the league. We won for Diogo, we won for his family and we won for us.
But, like Jamie Carragher warned in an interview with Arne Slot after the game, there were clear structural problems and they were going to be found out.
Liverpool still had time in the transfer window and the January window to address those problems. Slot may have adapted and altered his idealistic approach, but it was a failure on every level.
But the real image of the season was how it started, and maybe that’s the only one that matters. Football is the most important of unimportant things in life, but this season maybe the important things mattered more.
We can do it all again next season.