Liverpool Reportedly Still Plan to Persist with Arne Slot
A defeat to Aston Villa and criticism from Mohamed Salah briefly changed the narrative but here we are again.
Liverpool have been terrible to watch for the entirety of the 2025-26 season, turning in performances where the team seems by turns disinterested, exhausted, and mentally fragile. In truth, it’s a situation that goes all the way back to the start of the 2025 calendar year, when a side that had all but won last season’s Premier League title at that stage took their foot off and headed to Ibiza. Now, a year-and-a-half later, they slump towards the end of a disappointing season, but with the top five getting Champions League qualifications and the stumbles of others leading to a situation where they could potentially qualify with a record low points total that appears to be good enough for the people running the club to continue to employ Slot and sporting director Richard Hughes.
A dire defeat at Aston Villa last Friday, a game in which a team without the slightest hint of a tactical identity yet again seemed simply not to care, and then departing superstar Mohamed Salah calling out the team—and, most believed, the manager—for letting standards slip and drifting from the club’s “heavy metal” identity of the Jürgen Klopp years for a time seemed to change the narrative. For a few days at least talk was that things might change. Emergency meetings were being held.
Slot’s job might in fact be in danger. Now, though, it appears we’re right back where we were before last Friday’s embarrassing 4-2 concession to Villa. Slot will stay.
As will Hughes—at least until the end of the summer, when he’s expected to pop his parachute and head to the Saudi league. At least that’s what The Athletic and club-connected James Pearce think. And it’s what David Lynch , one of the few with ties to the club who has been willing to call out Slot for his shortcomings, thinks.