It has seemed nearly certain for some time now that this will be the final Liverpool season for Mohamed Salah and the final season for Andy Robertson. It could easily end up being the final season for Alisson Becker, and for differing reasons there are questions about what the future may hold for other key, or formerly key, players like Alexis Mac Allister and Cody Gakpo.
All of which is to say, it feels like it could be the end of an era. And until now, it’s felt as though that ending is destined
to be a crushingly sad and disappointing one. The start of a full rebuild, plus or minus a new head coach. After a season in which Liverpool won the Premier League and embarked on a summer re-load meant to set them up for success in the present and future.
A lost season. A wasted season. A disappointing, depressing slog of a season where nothing ever seems to go right and the players appear strangers together on the pitch, tactically naive and mentally fragile and regularly out-run and out-worked by opponents. A team of legends going out with a whimper, setting up an uncertain future.
With that as the background, Liverpool faced Galatasaray on Wednesday in the second leg of their Round of 16 Champions League tie knowing anything less than a win would see them out of Europe. With the team struggling to find consistent quality in the league and facing a difficult FA Cup quarter final, it would have been a blow that at the very least felt decisive and more broadly meaningful.
Given how poorly things have gone, not just when it comes to results but to the underlying performances, in a season where most had expected them in the title fight, it would have functionally served—or at least been seen—as the end of their season. And that in turn would have had potentially major implications for head coach Arne Slot, who has struggled to instil an identity in this group over the past 12 months.
Liverpool in 2025-26 have struggled to press, have struggled to effectively build up play or break down defences, have generally looked when they do score as if it’s the result of individual brilliance or largely unforced errors by the opposition. There has been no tactical identity, and when things go right they often don’t feel repeatable or the signs of foundation being laid for future success.
Which made Wednesday’s thrashing of Galatasaray such a surprise. A Liverpool side under as much pressure as any Liverpool side has been in in recent seasons, with increasingly public doubts being cast about the group and their coach, finding a way not just to win a must-win but to do it in physically and tactically dominant fashion.
It was the kind of a Liverpool performance, 90 minutes of energy and purpose, that hasn’t been seen—at least with any kind of consistency and when it matters—since autumn 2024. The question now is if it’s sustainable and if they can do it again, and again, and again to end the season on a Champions League re-qualifying high in the league while perhaps earning silverware in the FA Cup or Europe. Or if it’s a one-off.
It was, though, what everyone has wanted to see. And for fans who want to believe, that 4-0 win of a result on Wednesday night—and the manner of it!—allows, at least for a day or two, to think that anything is again possible for this group and this head coach, even if the evidence of the season to date rather suggests that isn’t the case.
The Liverpool we’ve seen going back 12 months now doesn’t seem like a side capable of following up that performance with another against Brighton in the league and Manchester City in the FA Cup quarter finals and Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League quarter finals. But then the Liverpool we’ve seen going back 12 or months more now didn’t seem a side capable of what they did last night.
It might not be reasonable to expect this Liverpool side to be able to actually follow up last night’s effective and exhilarating performance with another and another and another, but having now done it once it’s not impossible that this time around it could be the start of something more. That this time around it could be the foundation for something more.
A season that isn’t in the end a lost and wasted season. A final—or at least potentially final—season for some of the club’s all-time legends on the pitch that ends in celebrations rather than with regrets. Reason to believe again in a hopeful future for the club without the added uncertainty a managerial change, no matter how seemingly justified in the moment, would add to the mix.
You wouldn’t bet on it, to be fair. Not after how everything has gone these past 12 months. But for a day or two—and if we’re all lucky for at least a few more days beyond that—there’s a chance to do what fans do best. To hope and to dream and to believe that somehow it might all work out. You should live in the hope, while you can.
