Twelve months ago, Arne Slot was being lauded as one of the most impressive managers in the Premier League. He had inherited Jürgen Klopp's dressing room, kept the best players happy, blooded new ones with surprising ease, and delivered Liverpool their twentieth league title with a polish and conviction that silenced even the most hardened sceptics. Now, less than a year on from that triumph, the Dutchman is fighting for his job — and the noises coming out of Anfield suggest the fight may already be lost.
How a Title Defence Became a Collapse
The scale of Liverpool's decline in 2025-26 is difficult to overstate. They sit 21 points behind Arsenal in the league. They were embarrassed 4-0 by Manchester City in the FA Cup quarter-final, a result so bruising that captain Virgil van Dijk publicly admitted that the players "gave up" in the second half — a statement that, in any dressing room, represents a damning indictment of what is happening inside one. They have spent enormous money. Florian Wirtz arrived for £116m and was handed Klopp's iconic No.7 shirt. Hugo Ekitike came from Frankfurt for £79m. Alexander Isak left Newcastle for a British-record £125m. And yet the sum of those parts has not produced a team capable of defending a title. It has produced a team in crisis.
The Xabi Alonso Shadow
Every time Slot gives a press conference, the question underneath every polite query is the same one: how much longer? The name Xabi Alonso has been circling Anfield for months, a ghost in the corridors of a club that has long coveted the Spaniard as their long-term managerial heir. Alonso is, by all accounts, aware of Liverpool's interest. He has not shut down the speculation with anything approaching conviction. The failure to win back-to-back titles — and the manner of that failure — has only intensified the sense that Anfield's current hierarchy might be preparing for a change. FSG have not made any public statement, but sources close to the club have told The Athletic that Slot will be sacked if Liverpool exit the Champions League at any point this season. That condition is dangerously close to being met.
A Dressing Room Under Pressure
The most alarming detail of Liverpool's implosion is not the results themselves but the collapse of team spirit that appears to underpin them. When a captain of van Dijk's stature and experience tells the world that his players gave up in a cup quarter-final, it is not just an honest post-match assessment — it is a signal that something has fractured. Reports this week suggest that senior players feel Slot has lost control of the environment at the club, and that the standards set in his first season have eroded. Whether that points to a failure of management or simply the chaos that can follow a title-winning campaign — when motivation dips, when signings fail to gel — is genuinely difficult to judge from the outside. But from the inside, it sounds serious.
What Slot Says
The manager himself has not blinked publicly. Sources close to him insist he remains committed to the job and believes he will be in charge next season. His point, made with some validity, is that the club backed him with £400m worth of signings over the summer, and that a full pre-season with those players should produce a very different Liverpool. It is a reasonable argument. It is also, given the state of the table and the mood in the fanbase, an argument that is running out of time to be tested. The next few weeks — Champions League progress, the remaining Premier League matches, and the direction of the summer planning — will decide whether Arne Slot becomes a footnote or a second chapter in Liverpool's story.
Context: Arne Slot won the Premier League title with Liverpool in 2024-25. In 2025-26, Liverpool are 21 points behind Arsenal in the league and were eliminated from the FA Cup 4-0 by Manchester City. Xabi Alonso is the leading candidate to replace him if FSG decide to make a change.
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