It’s difficult to know how to judge Liverpool’s start to the 2025-26 season. Given the heavy squad turnover this past summer and that many in the squad will still be struggling with the loss of friend
and teammate Diogo Jota three months ago, a point off first seven games into the season is hardly a bad position to be in.
Yet at the same time, even having won most of their games—even having won every game they played until the past week, where they lost three on the bounce with two of those in the league and one in the Champions League—there are legitimate tactical concerns that reach back beyond the summer to at least to the start of 2025.
Liverpool simply haven’t looked their best for essentially the entire calendar year, and while there have always been reasons to explain away the why, the truth remains that Liverpool simply haven’t looked at their best for essentially the entire calendar year. As new signing Alexander Isak sees it, there’s only one solution.
“I think the belief is there,” Isak said when the striker was asked if this is a side that can reach the heights so many expected them to at the start of the season. “This team has shown it many times—and it’s never easy of course—but hard work and working on the details can get us back to our best. We have that belief.”
“I’ve been working to get back to my best and I’m still working to get to my best form. It was good to play out there again. I was hoping for a different result but we’ll keep working. I’m excited for the whole season ahead. Game by game we have to improve, of course to achieve the things we want, but yeah, really excited.”
After looking the best side in Europe in the first half of last season, Liverpool slowed when the calendar ticked to 2025. Much of that appeared to be due to a regression in their press. At the time, tiredness and perhaps a lack of rotation were seen as most as the culprit. Despite that drop, Liverpool won the league at a canter.
Having won the league, then, nobody much cared how they looked across those final games. Then came a summer of turnover and tragedy—and it would be churlish and wrong not to now extend significant grace to the players and coaching staff if they’re still, as many undoubtedly still are, struggling with the latter.
All of which leaves us without any real answers. Aside perhaps from working hard, working on the details, and believing this is a group with the talent and graft and determination—both the remaining players from the Jürgen Klopp era and the summer’s new signings—to find their way back to playing like an elite side.
