Even during Liverpool’s recent slump, the kind of quiet perspective people sometimes get while scrolling through updates on places like Cricket Exchange mirrors how Arne Slot has managed to avoid at least one familiar critic at home. Back in March, when Liverpool were flying high and pushing toward the Premier League title, Slot admitted that his father used to comment on every detail of their performances. But during this difficult stretch, Arend Slot has softened, drawing on his own experience coaching Dutch amateur side VV Berkum and understanding the emotional toll the job can take. These days, fatherly support clearly outweighs fatherly judgment.
Slot explained that his dad is not truly happier about the current form. A parent often feels freer to criticize when everything is going well, but when things fall apart, even those closest to you hold back because they know how heavy the burden becomes. That shift raises a bigger question: can the son show the resilience needed to turn things around? After losing nine of their last twelve matches, many observers feel the Liverpool manager has been trying to force a turnaround simply by sticking with the same approach. Whether seen as stubbornness or conviction, Slot is essentially betting that results will eventually even out because a squad with this much talent should never be losing so often. He may be right about the talent, but hoping for things to regress to the mean is hardly a strategy.
His reluctance to change is partly rooted in necessity. Injuries to Leoni, Bradley, and Frimpong have left Liverpool short-handed, and Slot pointed out that even if he wanted to switch to a back five, he barely has enough defenders to make it happen. The squad was already thin at center-back, with only four options available even before Leoni’s injury. Slot’s lone attempt using three at the back came in a League Cup defeat to Crystal Palace, ending in a 0–3 collapse. The return to Klopp’s old 4-3-3 last weekend at Nottingham Forest also ended in a 0–3 defeat. Aside from those experiments, Slot has stuck almost exclusively to his preferred 4-2-3-1.
Even so, the current structure still leaves room for meaningful rotation. Slot argues that nearly every fit player has been given ample chances except Wataru Endo and Joe Gomez, whose limited minutes have become increasingly puzzling. Endo, once a central figure and captain for Japan, has played only four Premier League minutes since August. Slot defended his choices by insisting that Ryan Gravenberch and Endo both suit certain roles, even though earlier decisions, such as briefly using Endo at right-back against Bournemouth, drew heavy criticism. Gomez has logged only 43 Premier League minutes, with none in the Champions League, a surprising detail given Konaté’s erratic form. Slot’s selection order in defense sometimes feels rigid to the point of self-defeat. Consider the numbers: Liverpool have lost only two of Robertson’s seven starts, yet they have fallen in nine of the fourteen games started by Calafiori.
Defensive frailty is backed clearly by the data. Only eight Premier League teams have allowed more shots on target, and only four have a worse expected goals against figure. Slot believes part of the problem comes from match scenarios where Liverpool concede early and are forced into desperate chases. In their last twelve matches across all competitions, they have conceded first ten times, and six of those goals arrived within the opening sixteen minutes. Making matters worse, the attack has underperformed on the finishing side. Their actual goals in both the Premier League and Champions League are well below expected output. Isaac, the £125 million signing, has underdelivered the most, though there is a fair argument that Chiesa should be receiving more minutes as the third-choice attacker. In Wednesday’s loss to PSV, Chiesa showed more spark than the Swede, yet Isaac still came on ahead of him. That 1–4 defeat felt like a new low.
Slot insists that performances are not as poor as the scorelines suggest, arguing that many defeats do not reflect the underlying play. The numbers partially back him up. In five of Liverpool’s six Premier League losses and both Champions League defeats, their expected goals exceeded their opponents’. They even sit third in expected goals across the Champions League. But this might also reinforce Slot’s biggest blind spot: the belief that results will fix themselves if the team simply stay the course. With the quality Liverpool possess, he believes improvement is inevitable, that they should already be playing far better than they are, and that recent failures represent rock bottom rather than the norm. As he put it, the team have yet to reach anywhere near their highest standard, and several performances in recent weeks feel like hitting the floor.
Whether Liverpool truly have bottomed out remains the unsettled question. For Slot’s sake, he must hope the worst has already passed. Even with the moral support he gets at home, one imagines that not even Arend Slot’s days coaching VV Berkum ever came with pressure quite like this. And during moments when fans quietly check scores, trends, or injury updates alongside their usual browsing through places like Cricket Exchange, there is a growing sense that Liverpool stand at a fork in the road, with little room left for missteps.