In theory, facing the second place side in the Azerbaijan Premier League at Anfield should be a game Liverpool win handily regardless disappointing season form or ever worsening fitness issues, and in the end
that’s exactly how things played out as Arne Slot’s domestically disadvantaged Reds cruised past Quarabag to lock down a top eight finish in the league phase of the Champions League and with it a bye to the Round of 16. Let’s dig into it.
Winners and Losers
People Who Haven’t Given Up On Watching Liverpool
This season has been pretty bad, let’s be honest. Whether you’re talking performances or results, Liverpool Football Club have not delivered on the football front in 2025-26. In fact, they haven’t properly and consistently delivered going back to autumn of 2024 when their scintillating form saw them build up a commanding lead in the Premier League that carried them to a title despite their subsequently slumping new year form—a slumping form that has continued through to, well, now.
Here, though, there were goals and there was fun. Alexis Mac Allister scored. Florian Wirtz scored. Mohamed Salah scored. Hugo Ekitike scored. Alexis Mac Allister scored again. Federico Chiesa scored. At times the Reds still seemed shaky at the back, but Qarabag never had the requisite quality to make them pay when they did get the opportunity to perhaps pounce on a mistake or spring an odd man break. It was, in short, fun. And everything that’s been going on on the pitch for these Reds since around Christmas 2024 aside, it’s nice to every now and then still get to watch Liverpool be fun.
Dialling Back The Intensity To Keep Players Fit
On the flip side, Liverpool’s defensive injury crisis got a whole lot worse when Jeremie Frimpong picked up an apparent groin injury minutes in. It’s the second serious setback this season for a player who had as close to a perfect injury record as you can get before Liverpool signed him. In the midst of a season where the Reds dial back their intensity to a degree that’d have Jürgen Klopp spinning in the bed he and his shiny teeth booked on Trivago.
The idea at least in part being that putting in fewer high intensity sprints to pressure opponents and doing a whole lot more resting on the ball would help to maintain fitness and energy levels though a long and tiring season with two games a week. Which, to be fair, makes sense in theory (even if it was always likely to make Liverpool less fun in theory and practice). Instead, though, all it’s resulted in a lot of bad football, poor results, and a whole lot of players picking up injuries. Including players who basically never picked them up before. So it goes and get fit soon, Jeremie.
Dissecting the Narrative
The narrative that has solidified over the 2025-26 season is that Liverpool, for all their domestic struggles, are still pretty pretty good in Europe, actually. The level of opposition when they’re not facing Premier League sides is, on balance, a little bit lower. The tactics used to defend against the Reds are, on balance, a little more naive. And with that as the background, well, these Reds can still deliver.
Momentary happiness aside, though, nobody is going to be willing to read too much into another victory against a continental opponent until Liverpool show they can perform against the pace and power (and low blocks) of the Premier League with any kind of consistency. Or unless they can somehow keep this going all the way to a win in the final—at which point, European opposition or not, they’ll definitely have been facing off against high quality and low naivety opposition for a minute. And also they’ll have won the Champions League.
What Happens Next
Liverpool have locked down a place in the Round of 16 of the Champions League, and that’s nothing to turn your nose up at regardless how bad things have often been in the Premier League. Speaking of the league, though, having now slumped to sixth following what most saw as their easiest run of fixtures this season, face Newcastle and Manchester City next and on current form a point would probably be a good result from those two games, and that could be problematic for their hopes of qualifying for next year’s edition of Europe’s premier cup competition.
On the plus side, the Premier League will almost certainly end up with five Champions League places this season, and that might just give the Reds a shot at qualifying domestically even if they keep stumbling along when they aren’t facing off against the likes of Qarabag and Marseille. Or hey, you never know, maybe now is when they finally, belatedly figure out how to bring a little bit of their European form back home to the domestic competitions.
