As Liverpool themselves acknowledged, sacking Arne Slot was “a difficult decision for us to make.” To which the natural response is yes, you certainly made it look that way. In prevaricating over a call that they did not have to make, they contrived to allow probably the best manager on the market and one who would have been perfectly suited for the Anfield dugout, sign up with rivals Chelsea before they even began needing a replacement. They should and could still get a very capable head coach, but the difference between the old Liverpool and this one, even if some of the central protagonists have returned, is that they do not look like acing every difficult decision ahead of them.
Michael Edwards will know better than most that doing that is how you win a Premier League title. It is making the hard decisions in a cold and rational fashion. He, then-Fenway Sports Group (FSG) president Mike Gordon, and the team that supported him in the mid-2010s were clear-sighted enough to see that for all the past success of Brendan Rodgers, who had taken Liverpool closer to a title than anyone else since 1990, he had to go if Jurgen Klopp was on the market.
At the back end of this season they prevaricated. The word around Anfield for much of the spring was that Champions League qualification would keep Arne Slot safe, that they understood this was a uniquely trying season for a club that had lost Diogo Jota in the summer. This was only the start of the building of the next Liverpool side. The imminent departure of Mohamed Salah would make it easier for Slot to forge something of his own rather than extract the last drops of juice from Klopp’s cornucopia, even if the performances had steadily declined over two years.
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That was the logic for letting Xabi Alonso slip away to Chelsea despite the fact he ticked almost every criteria Liverpool could have for their next head coach. A Champions League winner as a player, he has proven himself capable of energizing sides to win the biggest prizes in the game. He knows the club, which is probably worth more than nothing. His press and possess tactical style suits the players. No wonder, given he coached two of them.
And his hiding at Real Madrid will have offered valuable insight into how to survive under the media spotlight. The best run version of Liverpool might not take it so personally that he was not prepared to commit to leaving Bayer Leverkusen in the midst of what was shaping up to be one of the greatest seasons in club football history.
Andoni Iraola, widely viewed as the frontrunner for this vacancy, may go on to prove that he is equally capable of corralling a big club. For now, it is unknowable whether that is one of the tricks the outgoing Bournemouth manager has in a considerable arsenal of coaching qualities. Iraola can clearly develop young players and deliver performances above wage bill expectations. His proficiency at adapting his tactical style when he struggled early on in the Premier League reflects well on him too. It is just that those aforementioned qualities are more the sort that you need for a midtable English side than Liverpool.
Export the Bournemouth style at a higher talent level, and you might just get the “heavy metal football” Mohamed Salah wanted. Having said that, wouldn’t you rather see Iraola’s methods tested at something of a middle ground team between Bournemouth and Liverpool, a Bayer Leverkusen, or, even though he was not all that interested in the vacancy, an AC Milan? Certainly you’d like to have the option of choosing between the possible next big thing in an Iraola or the proper elite coaches, so many of whom have either locked themselves away at Stamford Bridge or for another two years on the international circuit.
It is hard to shake the sense that the best operating version of Liverpool’s front office would have crafted that optionality for themselves. This is not that. Edwards, who returned to the club in a more senior role in 2024, is said to have been unimpressed by the failure of owners FSG to build a multi-club model. The CV of sporting director Richard Hughes is burnished by the fact that he brought Iraola to Bournemouth before leaving. Little he has done at Liverpool has done much to bolster his standing.
Frankly, that includes hiring Slot. Though he took the club to a title with what was left of Klopp’s team, it was never clear what he might do with his own Liverpool. Even some of this season’s difficulties have been inherited from the old guard: the sniping of Salah, the failure to build a truly elite midfield since Fabino et al aged out of effectiveness, ceaseless contract crises.
None of this is to say that Slot shouldn’t have gone. When you’ve inherited at least the third-best team in the land, and two years later they are third, fourth or fifth, you cannot really argue that you are pushing this team onwards. The issue is not with the decision they’ve made, but the process over the last two years that has led them to this point.
It is as if this club has forgotten what made them so great for so long. At their peak, Liverpool had one of the two best managers in the world and the best recruitment and retention department in the world. Even if they nail the coaching decision and the former comes true come at the start of 2026-27, the evidence of the last few years is that the latter won’t. You don’t win a title that way.
You win the title because your thinking is joined up, it melds the here and now with the future. It does not, for instance, bequeath Arne Slot a squad where there is no obvious system to bring in the new while bidding farewell to the old (and still great) with sufficient respect. Was there ever really a way to turn two borderline wing backs, Florian Wirtz, Hugo Ekitike and Alexander Isak into a team that also platformed Mohamed Salah? Not when the pursuit of center back depth was as bungled as it was last season.
That won’t get any easier next summer. Having spent half a billion last summer, Liverpool do not only have to fill the gap they saw being plugged by Marc Guehi, who instead joined Manchester City in January, but find a new center back to replace Ibrahima Konate, who is set to leave on a free this summer, and all that with an eye on the dimming of Virgil van Dijk’s light. Oh and they need the midfield upgrades they’ve put off. And pace out wide. And a new manager.
It is quite a mess Liverpool have gotten themselves into. Not all of that is of Slot’s making.
