Another week, another disappointing result for Liverpool. Another game in which the Reds came up against a struggling opponent and made that opponent look strong—while they struggled to press, to create high quality chances, and to defend robustly. Another game in which the Reds were too often second in every battle.
That dialling back of intensity, an approach that worked through the first half of last season, has seen this group struggle to consistently deliver results going back 15 months now across
two seasons. That on Sunday Tottenham ended the game having run 9km, around 15% more, but looked the side with more left to give said a lot.
We’re now nearing the end of the 2025-26 season and it remains impossible to say what this side is being built to look like. What’s perhaps more damning is that Liverpool are now regularly outrun and outworked. That these defending Premier League champions look less physically capable and tire sooner than their opponents.
“We have to wake up because if we carry on like this we should be happy with the Conference League,” said a dejected Dominik Szoboszlai after Sunday’s 1-1 draw against a dysfunctional, relegation-battling Spurs side where he scored Liverpool’s goal and again looked one of the few in Red with real reserves of stamina.
“I feel flat. I don’t know what happened, I have nothing to say. In the last minute, again,I don’t know how many times this season already. We have to wake up. I don’t know why this keeps happening, I honestly don’t know. I think in the first half we played very well, controlled the whole game, they hardly created chances.
“In the second half we just didn’t so the same things. We will sit down together, and this is the most difficult time, but we still have to stick together. We’re not performing how we should but support us in a difficult time because there is still time to show how much we want it, but we have to stick together and fight for the club.”
The problem, of course, is that when it comes to supporting the club, it’s hard to expect the fans to do that when most of the Liverpool players look second best in every battle with a side a point away from relegation, and that in turn only leaves questions as to whether these Liverpool players are currently capable of keeping up.
There was much talk last season of head coach Arne Slot’s shift towards less intensity in training and less of a focus on physicality compared to predecessor Jürgen Klopp. At the time, after years of hard running under the ex-manager, it in fact seemed a shift that did help this group to get last season’s title win over the line.
Now, though, it’s hard to watch the team—with the very clear drop off in performance and energy levels for many of the key players from last season’s title winning side—without wondering if this group is now unable to compete consistently because they are simply not fit enough to do so at the highest levels in England and Europe.
