Arne Slot’s dismissal as Liverpool head coach on Friday morning closes one of the swiftest and most stunning collapses the Premier League has witnessed. Eighteen months after lifting the title in his debut season with 84 points and a nine-point cushion over Arsenal, the Dutchman departs Anfield with his side 14th in the table, 22 points adrift of leaders Manchester City and freshly eliminated from the Champions League at the league phase. Fenway Sports Group’s statement, issued at 09:47 GMT, was 74 words long and contained no thanks beyond the perfunctory.
From champions to chaos in 18 months
The numbers chart a freefall almost without parallel in the modern English game. Liverpool have taken 19 points from 16 league matches this season, conceding 31 goals — already four more than across the entirety of their title-winning campaign. Saturday’s 3-0 home defeat by Nottingham Forest, in which Anfield emptied with 20 minutes still to play, was their seventh league loss in nine. Mohamed Salah, the Premier League’s player of last season, has scored four times in all competitions and was substituted at half-time against Forest. Virgil van Dijk, stripped of the captaincy in October, has not started since the Merseyside derby.
The dressing room rupture, first reported by The Athletic in November, hardened over the winter. Slot’s decision to bench Alexis Mac Allister for the Champions League tie at PSV — a 4-1 defeat that ended Liverpool’s continental campaign on Wednesday — was, according to senior figures inside Kirkby, the breaking point for the squad’s senior players. The £127m summer signing of Florian Wirtz from Bayer Leverkusen, intended as the creative pivot of Slot’s second season, has produced one assist in 14 appearances. Wirtz started Wednesday on the bench.
Chief football writer Phil McNulty wrote on Friday that “Slot’s is one of the most remarkable falls from grace in Premier League history”, and the trajectory invites the comparison. Only Claudio Ranieri at Leicester in 2017 — sacked nine months after winning the title — offers a true precedent. Even Jose Mourinho’s 2015 dismissal by Chelsea came with the side 16th, not 14th, and after a half-season rather than a full collapse from champion to relegation-conversation in one campaign.
Where it unravelled
The seeds were sown in summer. Liverpool spent £218m on Wirtz, Hugo Ekitike and Milos Kerkez but did not replace Trent Alexander-Arnold, who left for Real Madrid on a free, with an established right-back. Conor Bradley has started 13 league games; opponents have targeted that flank ruthlessly, with 41% of goals conceded originating from Liverpool’s right. The decision to convert Ryan Gravenberch back into a number eight, vacating the holding role that anchored last season’s title push, has left the midfield exposed in transition. Forest’s three goals on Saturday all came on counter-attacks of fewer than nine seconds.
Tactically, Slot’s pressing structure — the calibrated, zonal mid-block that won him admirers at Feyenoord and produced 86 goals at Liverpool last term — has produced the lowest pressing intensity in the top half this season according to Opta’s PPDA metric (14.2, ranked 13th). Without the legs of last season’s setup, the system has inverted: Liverpool now concede the third-most shots from open play in the division.
What comes next at Anfield
Pep Lijnders, Jurgen Klopp’s former assistant, takes interim charge for Sunday’s visit of Brighton. FSG’s longer search is expected to centre on three candidates:
- Xabi Alonso, who left Real Madrid by mutual consent in October and has been working as a UEFA technical observer
- Roberto De Zerbi, available after his Marseille departure in March
- Andoni Iraola, contracted at Bournemouth but with a release clause understood to be in the region of £15m
Sporting director Richard Hughes, who appointed Slot in May 2024 in his first major decision, retains the confidence of owners John Henry and Tom Werner — for now. But the wider question is structural. Liverpool’s recruitment, coaching and squad-planning processes produced a champion 18 months ago and have produced this. FSG’s promised summer review, scheduled for June, has been brought forward to January.
For Slot, 47, the descent is professional and personal. He arrived at Anfield speaking of building on Klopp’s legacy, won the title at the first attempt, and leaves with a points-per-game ratio in his second season (1.19) lower than any Liverpool manager since Roy Hodgson in 2010. The fall, as McNulty noted, is remarkable. It is also, increasingly, a cautionary tale about how quickly the modern game punishes a single bad summer.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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