As a Premier League reporter, you are used to a lot of things. Especially when you have been editorially covering FC Liverpool since 2001. But that the path of England’s co-record champions from reigning Premier League champions to laughing stock would be such a short one—well, not even the professional pessimists in Liverpool saw that coming.
Do you still remember 20 September 2025? That was when the Merseyside Derby FC Liverpool vs. FC Everton (2:1) was our “Match of the Week” on event-breaks.com.
Or in other words: back then, the world in the red part of Liverpool was still in order.
Five league wins in a row were on Liverpool’s credit side at that time. “The Slot Machine”, as coach Arne Slot’s team is also called by the fans, seemed to be chugging calmly toward defending the title—like a Dutch cutter on the North Sea.
Now, allow me this maritime and banal wordplay—the cutter has seriously taken on water. Liverpool is sending out an S.O.S.
And not only since the sobering 0:3 (0:1) against Nottingham Forest on 22 November 2025 in the Premier League.
This match was a temporary low point for “The Reds”. It was their sixth defeat in the first twelve Premier League matches for the team from Merseyside.
Such an accumulation of league defeats last happened in 2014/2015 under Northern Irish coach Brendan Rodgers, who had to make way for the German Jürgen Norbert Klopp in October 2015.
Six league defeats from twelve matches represent a negative club record for LFC.
One horrified spectator in the stands against Nottingham was Tom Werner, chairman of the US-based ownership group FSG. What he thought—after spending 480 million euros on new stars, including German international Florian Wirtz from Bayer Leverkusen and Premier League record signing Alexander Isak (144 million euros) from Newcastle United—we can only guess.
FC Liverpool vs. Nottingham Forest 0:3 on 23 November 2025 in the Premier League: The “Reds” with Dominik Szoboszlai and Virgil van Dijk currently embody total insecurity. Photo: Imago Images / Xihua
Liverpool in the year after the championship: Many sources of error
What we do know: Liverpool learned nothing from their weak performances—only the Champions League matches at Eintracht Frankfurt (5:1) and against Real Madrid (1:0) may be considered positive exceptions—before the international break.
Matchday 11 ended with a 0:3 at eternal rivals Manchester City, a fully deserved victory for City coach Pep Guardiola in his 1,000th match as head coach.
“Slot needs solutions,” England legend Keir Radnedge warned at the time in Kicker Sports Magazine (issue of 10 November 2025), “he must free himself from transfer fees and external pressure.”
That is almost impossible in Liverpool’s current situation.
The fact that the Dutchman did not find these solutions after returning from the international break was shown in the match against the “Tricky Trees” from Nottingham.
England legend: “The team has learned nothing”
“The match represented a microcosm of the general crisis,” Radnedge wrote in Kicker (24 November 2025), “all three goals conceded came from poorly defended set pieces or transition moments. Both areas had already been clearly addressed as weaknesses by coach Arne Slot before the international break, but the players apparently learned nothing from it.”
Apparently not, no!
It rather seems that opponents have long cracked the code of the “Slot Machine” with its wide build-up play.
Particularly alarming in Liverpool is that the newly acquired stars costing almost half a billion euros currently couldn’t hit a barn door. Premier League record signing Alexander Isak is still without a league goal for Liverpool and was substituted off after 68 minutes against Nottingham—with neither gain nor loss in quality.
Stars worth nearly 500 million euros – but no ideas
For me as a long-time observer, this is hard to comprehend. It is truly rare that a championship-winning team is ruined by 500 million euros of investment.
After the championship season 2024/2025, Liverpool really had only one construction site to fix: compensating for the departure of left-back Trent Alexander-Arnold (TAA) to Real Madrid.
They failed—neither Milos Kerkez, newly signed from AFC Bournemouth, nor his Hungarian compatriot Dominik Szoboszlai, deployed at left-back, could adequately fill the position.
“Liverpool destroyed their midfield with the transfer of Florian Wirtz; they let Wirtz play and took Szoboszlai out,” was the harsh verdict of coaching legend Arsène Wenger on Qatari broadcaster beINSports. The Alsatian may well be right: Alexis Mac Allister, Ryan Gravenberch and Szoboszlai were key to success as a trio during the title-winning season.
The fact that Slot relies on aging star Mo Salah in attack and constantly switches between Hugo Ekitiké—freed from Frankfurt for 95 million euros—and Isak, destroys the rhythm in LFC’s forward line.
“I am responsible for the poor results,” said Arne Slot, who has been given a job guarantee by the FSG Group until January 2026.
The next decision that may prove fatal…
Der Autor: Carsten Germann berichtet seit 2002 aus erster Hand über den englischen Fußball, u. a. für DIE WELT, BILD am SONNTAG und seit April 2021 auch als leitender Redakteur beim Portal Fussballdaten.de. Zudem gab er mit den Büchern Football’s home (2007) und Absolute Dynamite! (2010) zwei Sammelbände mit seinen Fußball-Reiseerlebnissen aus Großbritannien heraus. Für DIE FUSSBALLREISE schreibt er regelmäßig über den Insel-Kick.