Watching Liverpool Football Club this 2025-26 season has quickly become a less than enjoyable experience, and it’s probably fair to say that everyone has their favourite theory to explain how and why things
are going wrong. Which does rather seem to sum up at least one fundamental awkwardness of trying to solve things. Namely, a little bit of everything seems to be wrong.
One of the most worrying things perhaps, though, is it’s currently hard to see what this all looks like if it goes right. Tactically, what is the end goal of the shift to embrace underlapping fullback runs and ask Mohamed Salah and Cody Gakpo to start—and often stay—further from goal? How, exactly, does it benefit Liverpool if it works? And if it does, is it worth the pain it took to get there?
In midfield, freeing up the players to be more flexible and positionally interchangeable you can at least see the goal of—and freeing up Ryan Gravenberch in particular has led to some impressive individual moments for last season’s breakout star. With new signings in a higher-powered attack and a now ineffective press, though, it’s clearly not helping the side’s defensive stability.
“Doing the basics right,” was manager Arne Slot’s response when asked what he was most disappointed by in his side’s latest defeat, a 3-2 loss at Brentford that marks his side’s eyebrow-raising fourth Premier League beating on the bounce now. “Though they are a very good team in winning duels and winning second balls, so you have to give them credit for that as well.”
“But of course it is hard to win a game of football if the other team wins more duels, more second balls than you, especially if that is also something they are playing off. It’s also difficult to win a game of football if the set-piece balance is in their favour. But yes, I think it’s up there [as far as disappointments] in my time here in terms of losing a game of football.”
Which all really just serves to hammer home that core question: is all this worth it? Liverpool are making basic mistakes. Liverpool aren’t playing well. Liverpool often look like a side who aren’t familiar with their teammates, even when those teammates aren’t new ones. And for a group this talented, it’s hard to comprehend the basics looking this hard.
New managers arrive at clubs all the time and bring new systems and new ideas, and the successful ones at least can implement at least the most foundational and fundamental parts of those new systems in a matter of weeks. The details and the finer points can take time. Getting them that last bit of the way or over that proverbial hump can take time.
The basics, though? For elite footballers, which this Liverpool side is very much filled with, getting the basics of a new system into place really shouldn’t take that much time. They shouldn’t take months. Or a year, considering Liverpool’s press has been in regression—and with it expected goals and goals against have been trending in the wrong direction—back to around Christmas of last year.
Winning the Premier League earns Slot considerable leeway, but when the basics aren’t working and it’s hard to see what all the tactical tweakery is meant to achieve even if it all comes off, well, maybe it’s time to get back to basics and re-focus on the passing and pressing patterns that underpinned one of the most successful Liverpool sides in recent seasons.
