If you’d asked pundits and fans what a realistic worst case scenario was for Liverpool Football Club in the 2025-26 season, few would have had things going as badly as they’ve turned out with the club set to finish the season without silverware and having left Champions League qualification late and likely only getting that due to the Premier League being given a fifth slot.
Despite that, there has been a growing rumble in recent weeks suggesting head coach Arne Slot remains safe in his position,
and today it’s grown to more than a rumble. Following their weekend win at Everton that put them seven points clear of nearest chaser Chelsea, Sky are reporting the club remain confident Slot is the right man for the job and that he will remain in the role next season.
Assuming it’s genuine news being leaked at the club’s behest it will raise more than a few eyebrows. Liverpool clearly have had some additional issues to deal with this season, most notably last summer’s passing of Diogo Jota, yet concerns about the direction the team is headed under Slot date back to around the half-way mark of last season.
In 2024-25, despite winning the Premier League, Liverpool’s press effectiveness, passing patterns, fitness, and finishing appeared massively degraded by the end of the campaign. At the time it was written off as a side that had won the league losing sharpness once they no longer needed it. Yet things have only got worse in 2025-26, leaving a side that lacks any outward signs of coherence.
Liverpool today can’t press effectively, can’t consistently string together, continue to underperform on the finishing front, and regularly look out of energy by the hour mark contributing to late collapses. They also still look a fragile side prone to individual errors that too often lead to a team-wide collapse, a side lacking strong leadership both on and off the pitch.
From the outside, at least, a decision to persist with Slot seems more about not wanting to fire a manager too soon than it seems justified on the evidence. From the outside, it appears a club repeating the mistakes of the past as when Liverpool persisted with Brendan Rodgers for another season well after it appeared progress had stalled and he was losing the fanbase.
Of course, none of us on the outside see the full picture, and so perhaps there is good reason to believe based on what goes on in training that Liverpool are now heading in the right direction again despite the on-pitch evidence from week to week and match to match. If Liverpool fans were not so very long ago believers, though, they are now by and large doubters.
If Arne Slot is the right man for the job, he will start next season with the fans wanting him to prove it—and ready to revolt the second he and the team stumble, which is what happened with Rodgers. And that in turn means that even if Slot might still theoretically be a suitable long-term appointment, that doubt will in itself risk turning the 2026-27 season into another muddled write-off.
When the fans no longer believe, not really, and when the manager has shown he doesn’t entirely know how to connect with them on an emotional level to bring the support even in times of struggle, that manager is going to have an uphill fight as supporters sit on their hands demanding he prove he can do the job and ready to get the knives out the second it looks like he’s falling short of that.
Of course, if Liverpool win out over their final five matches and look impressive, those doubts might end up packed a lot further down heading into next season. If that happens—if there are real signs of progress over the final weeks of the season—then just maybe it will turn out to be the right call. Skepticism and doubt, though, is never an ideal starting point.
Alternately, with Slot’s contract set to expire in summer 2027 and no talk of a new one in the works, it can’t be ruled out that this is just the club going out of their way to make supportive noises by way of various press outlets—and that those supportive noises will stop the second the season ends. Though if that’s the case, it might be easier to just say nothing right now.
